Hi EngineerBob,
"Very interesting"
The problem with barb wire is that this war is very fluid, the theater of operations is not a few hundred miles wide like the western front in WWI, but thousands of miles; which means any WWI field fortifications can be flanked rather easily.
Given your normal supply concerns, most generals are going to prefer bullets to more passive means of slowing the enemy.
Then there's the time element of how long does it take to emplace barb wire, which if its too be useful can't be bypassed, so how far out are your scouts to prevent the enemy from seeing you erect the posts and nail something to them?
Yes, barb wire will be nasty when the EoC has the steel production to spare for it, but that's a while in the future.
You might consider checking the amount of wire, posts etc and time required to erect a 4 foot fence, or triple concertina for a battlefield stretching 4 to 8 miles, then ask yourself if you were the general, would you prefer to have bullets or mortar shells instead.
Regarding using Nimue to foment desertion and rebellion in the ranks etc; its rather clever and she's certainly almost indestructible, and could appear in many units in a single day, but such provocateur operations are a slow process until the circumstances are overwhelming, while her time is probably too valuable, however much she might enjoy it, while being encouraged by her friends in the inner circle.
Should someone start a thread of how many different type of characters Nimue should or could impersonate?
L
EngineerBob wrote:(My apologies for the length of this post. I couldn’t thing of a good way to split it up.)
I've read some speculation that ICA will develop machine guns for use against AoG. I *think* machine guns are still a little beyond Charisan technology, but Gatling guns should be well within it. Given revolvers and cartridges, it shouldn't be long before someone comes up with the idea. (Or Howsmyn makes some “suggestions” to Mahldyn, his armaments genius, that result in the same thing.)
Possibly equally important would be the development of barbed wire. Charis and its allies already have all the technology they need for that. All they need is for someone to come up with the idea. And given that Safehold’s ecology includes plants somewhat similar to barbed wire (Charis’s dagger thorns), I could see some sergeant telling his section “If we only had dagger thorns here, it would be damn near impossible for the Temple Boys to get us out.” “You know, Sarge, we could MAKE something like dagger thorns! My brother-in-law works in the wire-drawing factory at the Delthak Works, and he’s written to me about how they have to be careful cutting the wires as they come off the machine. They’re sharp as hell, and he says more than person has been cut by the end when they were careless. What if we took a length of wire, say, six inches long, and wrapped it around a long length of wire? Put the thorns every foot or so, and they’d play hell with anyone trying to get through it. Especially if we put three or four wires above each other, starting just above the ground and maybe a foot apart!”
OK, so now you’d have Gatling guns, barbed wire, land mines, and long-range artillery. Getting close to WWI technology, right? On the AoG side, you’ve got the Harchongese coming down from the north. They slam into the Gatling guns, barbed wire, land mines, and artillery of the ICA and their Siddamarkian allies. The Harchongese take heavy casualties, just like the British, French, and German armies did, especially in the early days of WWI. But Harchongelse political and military leaders don’t really care, do they? After all, it’s mostly just the damn peasants who are dying. Not someone who matters.
And this is where Nahrmahn’s sneakiness comes into play. Did you know the French army mutinied late in WWI? (1917, to be precise.) (I'll bet Nahrmahn knows this. If not, Owl could bring it to his attention.) And this was an army that liked, or at least generally respected its political and military leaders; one that wasn’t treated as slaves. Nimue takes advantage of her size (“… a bit short for a man, but close enough to the norm that you could pass for whichever you choose.”) and ability to change her appearance to impersonate Harchongese soldiers (probably mainly privates and PFCs – there are so many, they’re anonymous) and begins spreading defeatism and sedition among the ranks. The average Harchongese soldier probably hates and fears his officers – it’s only his loyalty to Mother Church, and the fear of discipline, that keeps him going forward. What happens when the Harchongese soldiers fear ICA’s weapons as much as their own MPs and military discipline? At the same time, Nimue is going “We’re dying by the hundreds – thousands! And the Colonel doesn’t care. Does it look like he’s missed any meals? When was the last time any of us had a full belly? Now he wants us to charge their guns again. You think he’ll be within a mile of the shooting? No – he’ll be safe and sound in the rear. Well, I say, enough!” Do that enough times, in enough different platoons and companies and regiments, and the Harchongese army tears itself apart.
