HFQ Official Snippet #8

They aren't in Zion but they're in the Royal Palace with guards provided by the Inquistition.

Of course, it's only to protect them from the heretics.

Potato wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:The Church has his family under their "protection" so if his fleet is needed, then he'll sail with it.

Are they? I do not recall them being moved to Zion or having inquisitors placed in the household.

Slight Mistake on my part.

From Midst Toil and Tribulation, March YoG 896, Chapter IV

Better than I realized at the time, the earl thought grimly. Especially since I hadn’t realized—then—just how closely the girls and their families are being watched. Purely for their own protection against crazed Charisian assassins, given my role in handing the Charisian Navy the only defeat—modest though it may’ve been—it’s ever suffered. Of course.

He felt his jaw muscles ache and forced himself to relax them. And the truth was, he didn’t know which infuriated him more—the discovery that the Inquisition and the Royal Guard had decided to “protect” his family to make sure they remained hostages for his own obedience or the fact that he couldn’t truly decide even now whether or not he would have continued to obey if his family hadn’t been held hostage to ensure he did.

End Quote

His family aren't "guests" in the Royal Palace (or Zion) but they have Royal Guards and Inquisitors openly in their homes to "protect" them.

DrakBibliophile wrote:They aren't in Zion but they're in the Royal Palace with guards provided by the Inquistition.

Of course, it's only to protect them from the heretics.

Potato wrote:Are they? I do not recall them being moved to Zion or having inquisitors placed in the household.

Hi Lyonheart,

Your figures are probably more precise than mine. I was simply taking that figure of 300,000 cited in BGV's ruminations and then figuring the Siddarmarkans at 13000 per division as per p. 480 in the dead tree ed... thus coming up with 65000 for the first 5 divisions, 130,000 for the next 10 divisions, bringing that total to 195,000 and then doubling it to bring Siddarmark's total to 390,000 by spring. I see I screwed up the math my first time around on this. At any rate, that would bring the Alliance total to 690,000 men.

Your figures even more strongly reinforce my overall point. The armies of the Alliance are recruiting more people than they can successfully arm and the navy is coming up a bit short. Charis needs to get the navy some reinforcements, probably through recruiting, to deal with this privateering issue they are confronting.

The Alliance still has a quite a few muzzleloading rifles in service. What would you think of developing field conversion kits to convert them over to St Klymans like Maigwair's pet wizzard suggested to him when they were discussing when the St Klyman's were introduced. Bet Housmyn can come up with better kits than the church. That would permit more widespread training in EOC tactics for the RSA.

Don

Thank you RFC.

Hope you and the family are well.

Very interesting stuff for sure. Convoy escorts will have to be beefed up and sent on longer routes to work on avoiding these raiders. While you can't destroy every location they can operate from I think you may see some coastal cities that the privateers come from may get a visit from the ICN Marines.

Hi Don,

I suspect all the ICA armorers could make the conversions to breech loaders, NTM if the AoG can make conversions in the field, the ICA certainly can.

Regarding the ICN's numbers, we've had no evidence it was hurting that badly, albeit with some crews only doing only limited shore duty at Thesmar [2-4,000?], which given a total of around 200,000 men [1-2%?] before the SoS, mainly from Charis while the bulk of the ICA is from Chisholm, shouldn't affect the ICN so severely.

L

n7axw wrote:Hi Lyonheart,

Your figures are probably more precise than mine. I was simply taking that figure of 300,000 cited in BGV's ruminations and then figuring the Siddarmarkans at 13000 per division as per p. 480 in the dead tree ed... thus coming up with 65000 for the first 5 divisions, 130,000 for the next 10 divisions, bringing that total to 195,000 and then doubling it to bring Siddarmark's total to 390,000 by spring. I see I screwed up the math my first time around on this. At any rate, that would bring the Alliance total to 690,000 men.

Your figures even more strongly reinforce my overall point. The armies of the Alliance are recruiting more people than they can successfully arm and the navy is coming up a bit short. Charis needs to get the navy some reinforcements, probably through recruiting, to deal with this privateering issue they are confronting.

The Alliance still has a quite a few muzzleloading rifles in service. What would you think of developing field conversion kits to convert them over to St Klymans like Maigwair's pet wizzard suggested to him when they were discussing when the St Klyman's were introduced. Bet Housmyn can come up with better kits than the church. That would permit more widespread training in EOC tactics for the RSA.

Don

lyonheart wrote:Hi Don,

I suspect all the ICA armorers could make the conversions to breech loaders, NTM if the AoG can make conversions in the field, the ICA certainly can.

Regarding the ICN's numbers, we've had no evidence it was hurting that badly, albeit with some crews only doing only limited shore duty at Thesmar [2-4,000?], which given a total of around 200,000 men [1-2%?] before the SoS, mainly from Charis while the bulk of the ICA is from Chisholm, shouldn't affect the ICN so severely.

L

n7axw wrote:Hi Lyonheart,

Your figures are probably more precise than mine. I was simply taking that figure of 300,000 cited in BGV's ruminations and then figuring the Siddarmarkans at 13000 per division as per p. 480 in the dead tree ed... thus coming up with 65000 for the first 5 divisions, 130,000 for the next 10 divisions, bringing that total to 195,000 and then doubling it to bring Siddarmark's total to 390,000 by spring. I see I screwed up the math my first time around on this. At any rate, that would bring the Alliance total to 690,000 men.

Your figures even more strongly reinforce my overall point. The armies of the Alliance are recruiting more people than they can successfully arm and the navy is coming up a bit short. Charis needs to get the navy some reinforcements, probably through recruiting, to deal with this privateering issue they are confronting.

The Alliance still has a quite a few muzzleloading rifles in service. What would you think of developing field conversion kits to convert them over to St Klymans like Maigwair's pet wizzard suggested to him when they were discussing when the St Klyman's were introduced. Bet Housmyn can come up with better kits than the church. That would permit more widespread training in EOC tactics for the RSA.

Don

Hi Lyonheart,

I think they are coming up a bit shorter than you seem to recognize. In his rumination in this last snippet, Rock Valley notes that about half of the ICN's hulls are tied up in convoy protection and that swarm of privateers suggests that the protection still isn't strong enough, which implies that the ICN is stretched too tight.

Once the KH VIIs arrive, Sharpfield is going to need reinforcements, particularly in light combatants. They gotta come from somewhere.

Don

WHy not offer the republic ships so they can act as privateers for their side, allows them to gain money for the war and themselves?

Privateers go after merchant ships not navy ships and the supply of non-Charisian merchant ships has "dried up" for some reason.

In any case, what Charis needs is more navy ships to go after the privateers so "offering" navy ships to the Republic won't solve the problem.

SYED wrote:WHy not offer the republic ships so they can act as privateers for their side, allows them to gain money for the war and themselves?

DrakBibliophile wrote:Privateers go after merchant ships not navy ships and the supply of non-Charisian merchant ships has "dried up" for some reason.

In any case, what Charis needs is more navy ships to go after the privateers so "offering" navy ships to the Republic won't solve the problem.

SYED wrote:WHy not offer the republic ships so they can act as privateers for their side, allows them to gain money for the war and themselves?

Hi Drak,

You've nailed the problem exactly. What I'm wondering is how many of those schooners, brigs, etc. that those Charisian privateer consortiums were using are now for sale in Charis. I know that the navy already bought up some of them, but I would suspect not all. They would probably be available at a fraction of their original cost now that they have wiped out other people's merchant shipping. It would make far better sense to buy them up, use them to help out with the Desnairian privateer problem than to let them rot.

The difficulty with adapting Syed's idea is that the Siddarmarkans really have no naval background and are needed to be available as a manpower pool to expand the army as the weapons become available. Charis, on the other hand, still has a vast pool of merchant seamen. I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that trade is down at least some due to the embargo which if true would mean that some of those merchant seamen would be out of work and available to be recruited to man those addtitional hulls the navy is needing.

Some thoughts, anyway.

Don

I believe that Corisande is being ignored as a source of sailors and ship building. They have just been truly incorporated into the Empire. I would be shocked if volunteers don't look for naval recruiting offices. Charis pays its sailors and Corisande's navy and merchant shipping had been devastated by the ICN. There has to be a significant number of trained seamen shorebound in Corisande.

Between untapped ship building capacity and shore bound sailors, significant numbers of schooners should be coming out of Corisande to protect Imperial Charisian Shipping. They wouldn't even have to be navy ships. They could be private ships paid to protect convoys. Paying private contractors to augment the ICN might be the most cost effective way to protect convoys.

Heck, its another vector to insert money into the Imperial economy.