Information I'd love to know

The best reason for believing that the Mesan Alignment does not know the location of Bolthole is that Leonard Detweiler says they don't know where Bolthole is. I don't remember which book it is, but the text explicitly states that the Alignment does not know where Bolthole is.

SWM wrote:The best reason for believing that the Mesan Alignment does not know the location of Bolthole is that Leonard Detweiler says they don't know where Bolthole is. I don't remember which book it is, but the text explicitly states that the Alignment does not know where Bolthole is.

Indeed. But they are still looking...

MaxxQ wrote:

bunyipbelle wrote:"For all I know - or all I can prove anyway he might've been ambushed and devoured by space hamsters" This comment was made by Denis LePic about Victor Cachat's possible location in Mission of Honor.
I would like to know more about space hamsters.If they are fierce enough that Denis thinks that they could ambush and eat someone like Victor Cachat then they must be the terror of the spaceways. Also why haven't we heard more about them? Are they only a menance in Haven's area of space? Are they tiny ,furry and dangerous with very sharp teeth attacking in large numbers or large, furry and menancing with very sharp teeth attacking in large packs? How do they deal with the vacuum of space? I really want to know.

You'll really need to talk to Minsc about that. He would know better than anyone, having Boo for a companion.

Ah but Boo is only a Miniature Giant Space Hamster..how would you deal with the Two headed fire-breathing phase doppelganger giant space hamster

"Go for the Eyes Boo, Go for the eyes.."

I loved Spelljammer and Baldurs Gate.

SWM wrote:The best reason for believing that the Mesan Alignment does not know the location of Bolthole is that Leonard Detweiler says they don't know where Bolthole is. I don't remember which book it is, but the text explicitly states that the Alignment does not know where Bolthole is.

I believe you mean Albrect stated that he had no knowledge on Bolthole's location.

Leonard has been dead for centuries and never heard about Bolthole because the people who dreamed it up hadn't been born before he died. (For that matter, nor had their grandparents been born.) So any statements Leonard would have on the subject would be pointless and slightly out of date.

Theemile wrote:

SWM wrote:The best reason for believing that the Mesan Alignment does not know the location of Bolthole is that Leonard Detweiler says they don't know where Bolthole is. I don't remember which book it is, but the text explicitly states that the Alignment does not know where Bolthole is.

I believe you mean Albrect stated that he had no knowledge on Bolthole's location.

Leonard has been dead for centuries and never heard about Bolthole because the people who dreamed it up hadn't been born before he died. (For that matter, nor had their grandparents been born.) So any statements Leonard would have on the subject would be pointless and slightly out of date.

Sorry, yes, Albrecht. Actually, since I still haven't located the text, I can't remember for sure whether it was Albrecht or one of his sons.

Dafmeister wrote:This leads into another question, regarding the career paths in the RMN. Is it possible to advance to flag rank purely in staff/admin roles? Is it possible to be a professional staff officer?

I don't think it's been explicitly stated, but I don't think it is, because we've never seen (to my recollection) a staff officer above the rank of Captain in the RMN (unlike the SLN, where the average fleet staff has more gold braid than an RMN task force). My instinct is that you need to hold at least one hyper-capable command to make Captain of the List, which is the gateway to flag positions.

While on the subject, do we know if Honor has ever been a staff officer? I can't see any reference to her holding such a position in her bio on the wiki - the nearest she gets is her time teaching at the Academy/running the Crusher and her stint on the WDB between the Wayfarer cruise in Silesia and her posting to command a cruiser squadron in IEH, unless being Sarnow's flag captain counts (she wasn't on the staff, but worked very closely with it).

I'm a little surprised by this - if she was being looked at as a future flag officer early on then I would have expected her to have at least one staff posting in her career. Still, accidents happen, and it could be that Honor getting bumped up two grades after Basilisk Station may have thrown a spanner in Admiral Cortez's plans.

Yes there is the possability of haveing staff officers rise to flag rank. but they have real problem in that flag officers who go that carrer route don't have the respect of flag officers who spent most of there time out on the sharp end of the spear. when buracrst officer get assigned to combat units most of the time they don't have clue as to what happens when the shit hits the fan. When i was in the navy we had a Vice Admiral who after 35 years of service had spent less than 7 years at sea and was a total fuck up. His Chief of Staff really ran the CVSG and he IIRC had held 3 commands and in 25 years of service had spent 20 years at sea.

IIRC these flag officers were buacrats who were staff/admin.

Draskovitch
Janacek
Chakrabarti
Hemphill to a point

saber964 wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:This leads into another question, regarding the career paths in the RMN. Is it possible to advance to flag rank purely in staff/admin roles? Is it possible to be a professional staff officer?

I don't think it's been explicitly stated, but I don't think it is, because we've never seen (to my recollection) a staff officer above the rank of Captain in the RMN (unlike the SLN, where the average fleet staff has more gold braid than an RMN task force). My instinct is that you need to hold at least one hyper-capable command to make Captain of the List, which is the gateway to flag positions.

While on the subject, do we know if Honor has ever been a staff officer? I can't see any reference to her holding such a position in her bio on the wiki - the nearest she gets is her time teaching at the Academy/running the Crusher and her stint on the WDB between the Wayfarer cruise in Silesia and her posting to command a cruiser squadron in IEH, unless being Sarnow's flag captain counts (she wasn't on the staff, but worked very closely with it).

I'm a little surprised by this - if she was being looked at as a future flag officer early on then I would have expected her to have at least one staff posting in her career. Still, accidents happen, and it could be that Honor getting bumped up two grades after Basilisk Station may have thrown a spanner in Admiral Cortez's plans.

Yes there is the possability of haveing staff officers rise to flag rank. but they have real problem in that flag officers who go that carrer route don't have the respect of flag officers who spent most of there time out on the sharp end of the spear. when buracrst officer get assigned to combat units most of the time they don't have clue as to what happens when the shit hits the fan. When i was in the navy we had a Vice Admiral who after 35 years of service had spent less than 7 years at sea and was a total fuck up. His Chief of Staff really ran the CVSG and he IIRC had held 3 commands and in 25 years of service had spent 20 years at sea.

IIRC these flag officers were buacrats who were staff/admin.

Draskovitch
Janacek
Chakrabarti
Hemphill to a point

All of the above, though, had tours of duty in deep space - for instance, Hemphill commanded Grendelsbane for awhile.

I think it's been explicitly said that Captain is about as high as you can go without ship command, at least as a staff officer - for instance, we know Commodore Mercedes Brigham has quietly refused a promotion, because rising to Rear Admiral would make her too senior to be Honor's chief of staff, and that's where she prefers to be.

I'm not sure how that applies to researchers and administrators, though - we know that if you spend too long "dirtside" (i.e. not on ship) you are stuck there permanently, but it doesn't necessarily follow that your promotions stall - I can absolutely imagine engineers and researchers and bureaucrats rising to flag rank without ever having to command in combat, but they would never be given fleet command as officers, either. Hemphill's a bit of a special case in that she's jumped between fleet duty and research as required - see Grendelsbane.

As for Honor - before her career was derailed at Hancock, my bet is that her next stint would have been as an admiral's operations officer - perhaps even Sarnow's. By the time she got back to Manticoran service, she'd already proved herself in fleet command, and the Manty Admiralty wasn't going to put her on an admiral's staff when they had better use for her talents elsewhere, but she did seem to skip a few rungs on the career ladder, didn't she?

She may not have been on a staff, but she did do a stint on the WDB as well as the SI/ATC teaching bit. And if the point of a staff assignment is to learn to organize, I'd say she'd already proven herself in that respect through her work as Steadholder.

But mostly I think her time on Grayson made a staff position a moot point. Who's going to insist an admiral do time as someone's staffer?

NortonIDaughter wrote:Who's going to insist an admiral do time as someone's staffer?

Oh, I can think of quite a few people. Fortunately for Honor, none of them are worth listening to.

roseandheather wrote:As for Honor - before her career was derailed at Hancock, my bet is that her next stint would have been as an admiral's operations officer - perhaps even Sarnow's. By the time she got back to Manticoran service, she'd already proved herself in fleet command, and the Manty Admiralty wasn't going to put her on an admiral's staff when they had better use for her talents elsewhere, but she did seem to skip a few rungs on the career ladder, didn't she?

Well, she was already lined up to be a flag captain for another Admiral in command of Nike's BatCruRon, obviously intended to be part of White Haven's Sixth Fleet. That was in 1905. When promoted to Admiral in 1913 she was told by Thomas Caparelli that she would probably have made Vice Admiral before her capture(in other words, by 1911!) but for the calibre of her political enemies.

I don't think the Admiralty could have put her into a staff billet after Hancock either - if they had their way and she didn't kill Young, she would have become a Commodore not long afterwards. Based on Mercedes Brigham's rank and position on Honor's staff, a Commodore Harrington might have been able to serve as White Haven's Chief of Staff - think of the personal complications!