Skills and skill levels for building an army, intelligence service, bureaucracy

[Icelander]

I deeply enjojy such fiction as the 1632-series, the Emberverse and the Belisarius-series. In each of them, we have a changing world, collapsing or threathened old societal structures and hyper-competent protagonists responding to the situation by creating new institutions in a very short time.

Now, I obviously realise that the capabilities of the protagonists are skewed significantly toward the 'heroic' end of the human range. In some cases, not only the principal protagonist, but everyone they ally with demonstrate one-in-a-thousand-years levels of competence in a wide range of different disciplines.

That, however, is not a problem. I'm already setting the game in a world where heroes are more heroic, villains more villainous and the elite are more elite. In game terms; courage, conviction, expertise, accomplishment, repute and renown tend to bring with them supernatural gifts, accelerated learning and other larger-than-life talents.

What I'm interested in exploring is rather how what skills are necessary for the rapid building and expansion of militaries, intelligence organisations or civil bureaucracies and how high the levels needed for extremely rapid build-up are in GURPS terms.

For example, the skill of choosing good subordinates on short acquintanceship is obviously vital to anyone looking to do this. Would that use Administration? Leadership? Psychology (Applied)? Intelligence Analysis? Politics?

One PC in the campaign has spent the past two months of game time as the Viceroy of Purple Reign, a powerful trade corporation, mercenary company and privateer fleet in a foreign land where they are employed to help the local forces defend against an invanding army. Before that, he had some two months of preparation time as he visited the area for a few weeks and left some underlings behind for six weeks before coming back with the full force of Purple Reign.

The locals are what remains of a once might empire, but their lands now hold less than a million people (out of five million which they controlled a bare two years ago), less of half of which are fed or employed, and their armed forces are around 50,000, mostly poorly equipped militia. Even worse, the best troops belong to one of a dozen competing factions for ultimate power once the war is over and cooperate only while the invaders represent a worse threat.

Said PC arrived there commanding a 1,000 elite and loyal troops of the PCs' own mercenary forces, a 1,000 other mercenaries of good quality and some 3,000 sailors and marines on their own ships, mostly loyal and competent men. Locally, they had a factor in the person of the second-in-command of a consolidated guild of potters, glazers, glassblowers, weavers, bronzesmiths and other craftsmen and artisans (the Hegemony of Artisans), which has for the last sixteen years kept order in their part of the city* and some three hundred local 'militia'** who have spent the past four months being trained by Purple Reign marines to be full-time soldiers.

The PC, Ankhapet Si'Hamat, is a Persian-esque aristocrat who after being exquisitely educated prefered the company of his uncles and cousins of the desert tribes. He's a mounted archer, a scholar, a sorcerer and a born politician with high ideas about his own importance and an amibition the size of several continents.

He's busily trying to establish a cult of personality around himself and since he can lay down a storm of enchanted arrows in battle that make as much difference as several regiments of troops, he'd succeeding fairly well in that. Of course, slaying two dragons in full view of tens of thousand of people on his introduction to the locals didn't do him any harm.

He's a polymath, with fairly Julius Caesar-esque capabilities for mastering most anything he sets his mind to learn. In terms of skills, he has a lot of scholarly skills at 16-18, such as Thaumatology, Theology, History, Geography, Expert Skill (Political Science) and, of course, Writing, Literature and Poetry. He also has Mathematics, Architecture and Engineering at similar levels, not to mention Tactics and Operations. And he has Diplomacy -18, Propaganda -17 and Intelligence Analysis -16. Not to mention that he has Administration, Leadership and Strategy at skill 19 and Politics and Public Speaking at 20.

Coupled with Attractive, Charisma 2, Status 4 and Voice, he can maybe even overcome being a foreigner in a xenophobic land, especially since he can speak a little of the local lingo and is quite familiar with their culture, not to mention being from a neighbouring country which is not perceived as being all that savage or barbaric, all things considered.

He's also got a small circle of talented advisors, such as an alchemist and an artilleryrist to mastermind his plans in the field of alchemy, weapons design and technology, who are around skill 18-24 in their various fields. And he has a military chief of staff with Administration (Military) -18, Intelligence Analysis (Military) -18 and Leadership -18, in addition to solid 15+ in most other military skills.

Finally, the financier responsible for keeping the operation solvent and negotiating with foreign merchants, finance ministers and mercenary lords is a PC with skill 20+ in most everything he'll roll against, up to skill 25 in Merchant and Finance. And the herald and chief spymaster is a PC too, with Charisma 3, Cultural Adaptability, Empathy, Fashion Sense, Language Talent, Photographic Memory and Voice; not to mention skill 15+ in all the necessary skills and skill 18 in Administration, Intelligence Analysis and Propaganda, as well as Current Affairs (Politics) -20, Politics -21 and Public Speaking -21.

Most of these characters have decent Teaching too and some of them have Body Language and/or Detect Lie. The chief of counterintelligence has both Body Language and Detect Lie at skill -19. None of them, however, has Psychology (Applied) at any high level, except the spymaster who has -15 (-18 when he can converse with subject).

I'm wondering how fast these few extremely capable characters, aided by the officers and men of their own mercenaries, could create local institutions and train local people. Veterans are widely available, but there are some legal restrictions on obtaining them. Assume that no more than a thousand already serving military veterans can be obtained.

How swiftly can units of organised military personnel, whose loyalty they can somewhat trust, be available to them?

I'm thinking that their initial material would be the 300 chosen artisan 'militia'-men, a thousand experienced street fighters from a friendly revolutionary/criminal organisation, most of them former slaves (and 200 of them former gladitators), combined with some 500 prime veterans chosen among 50,000 men as leaders, instructors and elite troops. Another 500 broken-down veterans useful as instructors or garrison, but not capable of marching 20 miles per day.

Add some 200-500 shepherd/bandits*** and their families who weren't serving in the local military (because they were too clever to be rounded up), but jump at the chance of regular pay.

How long to turn these people into real military units? What skill rolls ought I make? Who makes them?

And how fast can they grow an intelligence network? Plenty of out-of-work spies and assassins around, but how fast can they be vetted?

*After the civil wars broke out.
**While they were never full time, they still do represent picked men out of security forces who have spent 16 years defending hearth and home in a city which has been at war, wracked by riot and riven by gangs for almost two decades. These chosen three hundred are those who decided that they liked fighting more than craftsmanship, when the push came to shove, and were chosen by veteran soldiers as the best of some thousand volunteers.
***They could get more, but this represents choosing only those with skill at arms, experience of skirmishing or at least good potential.