Special Forces

shaeun wrote:I personally got the idea that the items stored were things that could easily be expended from the stores or lost without too many questions.

Effectively this means that the items chosen are random. This allows for the inclusion of items later for plot reasons if desired but does not imply that the equipment has to be used.

That's pretty much correct.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3033&p=65267

The contents of Nimue's Cave do not constitute supplies carefully laid up for a series of preplanned, clearly visualized scenarios. Those contents consist of what Commodore Pei and Pei Shan-wei were able to divert/steal/conceal during the terraforming process itself, and they — along with Nimue's PICA — were tucked away before Langhorne and the colonists ever arrived to settle the planet, at which point — for the first time — the Commodore and Shan-wei discovered that their suspicions about Langhorne and Bédard had been justified and learned — for the first time — about the Church of God Awaiting.

One should not refine over much on the planning/foresight of Kau-yung or Shan-wei based on the contents of the cave. Their effort was to give Nimue as broad a set of tools as they could within the context of what was available to them, not to provide specific weapons or capabilities against any specific, clearly visualized threat situation. Nor should the absence of any virtual personalities of their own in the cave, as a great surprise to anyone.

4kto4ko=-g=-4fs

SonicShane97 wrote:Guys, I take it the inner circle would never give the go ahead to set up a Special Forces which had complete access to the SNARCS and the full truth about Safehold?

Again, what is meant by "special forces" and what sort of numbers we're talking about is relevant.

I don't think there's some pressure felt by anyone to blow the Inner Circle wide open to put TF weaponry in all the resulting hands. There's even less pressure to start with children to do that.

But having some contingency plans for trained soldiers who are also members of the Inner Circle using TF gear for... something? If it's really contingent, if there's something useful to fill in for "something", if you can get the people, if you're safe from the Rakurai using the stuff... if all of that's satisfied, then maybe. Merlin and Nimue are effectively that as it stands. There haven't been jobs that have called for use of TF hand-held gear that is all that much of a weapon since the tractor-presser unit used to make Archbishop Dynnys slip, fall, and break parts in OAR, so occasions for these hypothetical non-PICA seijins-or-close seem to be very, very few. (I'm not counting the swords, since, while they're of a TF tech base, they're not what the TF used and they can pass for normal.)

There is certainly nothing wrong with exploring the notion of specical forces as a "what if question." But in terms of speculating about what's coming in the books, I think we've talked about this before and RFC has ruled it out.

That is not to say that there aren't more covert ops like the rescue of Irys and Daivyn in HFAF coming up. It's just that those ops will be arranged from resourses already at hand rather than developing a standing force to deal with such contingencies.

Myself, I wish they would have had something available to rescue Manthyr and his people.

Don

n7axw wrote:<SNIP>

Myself, I wish they would have had something available to rescue Manthyr and his people.

We all do, but we have to take the time element into consideration. Officially Cayleb and Sharley couldn't know about Manthyr's defeat and capture until the remnants of his fleet arrived in Tellesberg. (Or a schooner from the fleet arrived earlier if we want to split hairs.) Then they couldn't justify any rescue mission until a "spy" could inform them where the prisoners were being held, by which time any fleet assembled to launch a rescue mission would have arrived too late.

Even if such a mission were possible, any rescue fleet would have been trapped deep in the Gulf of Dohlar with Thirsk and the NoG fleet he commands watching over the galleys where the prisoners were being held, and the prevailing winds blowing west to east, making escape a slow and difficult process with Thirsk on their tails the entire way.

Had there been enough time, a fleet comprised entirely of schooners with the ICM providing the troops to perform the actual rescue using longboats on a moonless night would have been the best option, since the schooners could escape much more easily. (I'd send a follow-up fleet with some troop ships with galleons guarding them with instructions to meet the returning schooners at a designated place, such as Greentree Island to carry the POWs home.)

If the rescue fleet was seen during their voyage to Gorath however, Thirsk would be warned by semaphore that they were coming and the prisoners would have been moved.

Since there were hundreds of sick, starving sailors to rescue, even if complete surprise were achieved, it would take hours to rescue all the POWs, and the Charisians might well have run out of darkness before picking up all the prisoners.

So it's pretty clear that any sort of rescue would have been a very long shot, even if there was enough time available to conduct one.

McGuiness wrote:

n7axw wrote:<SNIP>

Myself, I wish they would have had something available to rescue Manthyr and his people.

We all do, but we have to take the time element into consideration. Officially Cayleb and Sharley couldn't know about Manthyr's defeat and capture until the remnants of his fleet arrived in Tellesberg. (Or a schooner from the fleet arrived earlier if we want to split hairs.) Then they couldn't justify any rescue mission until a "spy" could inform them where the prisoners were being held, by which time any fleet assembled to launch a rescue mission would have arrived too late.

Even if such a mission were possible, any rescue fleet would have been trapped deep in the Gulf of Dohlar with Thirsk and the NoG fleet he commands watching over the galleys where the prisoners were being held, and the prevailing winds blowing west to east, making escape a slow and difficult process with Thirsk on their tails the entire way.

Had there been enough time, a fleet comprised entirely of schooners with the ICM providing the troops to perform the actual rescue using longboats on a moonless night would have been the best option, since the schooners could escape much more easily. (I'd send a follow-up fleet with some troop ships with galleons guarding them with instructions to meet the returning schooners at a designated place, such as Greentree Island to carry the POWs home.)

If the rescue fleet was seen during their voyage to Gorath however, Thirsk would be warned by semaphore that they were coming and the prisoners would have been moved.

Since there were hundreds of sick, starving sailors to rescue, even if complete surprise were achieved, it would take hours to rescue all the POWs, and the Charisians might well have run out of darkness before picking up all the prisoners.

So it's pretty clear that any sort of rescue would have been a very long shot, even if there was enough time available to conduct one.

All true, but I can still wish...

Don

Recruiting orphans from the death camps as they are liberated would be a good way of providing personel for Special Forces. They could be trained on an isolated island and used with blimps in order to provide transportation to any place on the world.

6L6 wrote:Recruiting orphans from the death camps as they are liberated would be a good way of providing personel for Special Forces. They could be trained on an isolated island and used with blimps in order to provide transportation to any place on the world.

Not really good for the kids. They need to be socialized and educated, and main streamed into society, ideally by adoption into good families. Confronting them with the choice this would represent before they are old enough to make responsible choices would be deeply unethical.

Don

n7axw wrote:

6L6 wrote:Recruiting orphans from the death camps as they are liberated would be a good way of providing personel for Special Forces. They could be trained on an isolated island and used with blimps in order to provide transportation to any place on the world.

Not really good for the kids. They need to be socialized and educated, and main streamed into society, ideally by adoption into good families. Confronting them with the choice this would represent before they are old enough to make responsible choices would be deeply unethical.

Don

I am not certain that mainstreaming orphans is a moral imperative. Socialization can be done in many forms, one of which could be the formal adoption of the orphans by a newly formed 'Training Regiment'.

Is it a little out of the box? Yes, but it could be structured the say way that scouting is with adults around for supervision.

In other words - it is not an immediate non-starter. Though one would have to be very careful during the implementation phase.

shaeun wrote:

n7axw wrote:Not really good for the kids. They need to be socialized and educated, and main streamed into society, ideally by adoption into good families. Confronting them with the choice this would represent before they are old enough to make responsible choices would be deeply unethical.

Don

I am not certain that mainstreaming orphans is a moral imperative. Socialization can be done in many forms, one of which could be the formal adoption of the orphans by a newly formed 'Training Regiment'.

I suspect there's some significant space between "mainstreaming orphans" and declining to recruit them out of liberated concentration camps for committed service in armed forces with training for years on an isolated island. That manages, amazingly, to make liberating orphans from Inquisition concentration camps morally sketchy. It's quite an accomplishment.

Is it a little out of the box? Yes, but it could be structured the say way that scouting is with adults around for supervision.

In other words - it is not an immediate non-starter. Though one would have to be very careful during the implementation phase.

That would be when the scouts, who've gone from watching their parents die horribly and face starvation, torture, and/or being worked to death, to a cult-like isolated experience after "volunteering" for special forces duty, go on to kill and die under the orders of their "liberators"?

Yes, that would take a lot of care. Mostly to keep people from finding out you're doing it.

This proposal is being made on behalf of the same Empire that is triumphantly ending child labor and fighting for freedom of conscience. Kids out of concentration camps aren't in a position to refuse "offers" of service in an armed force. Kids who've gone on to spend years of intense socialization - indoctrination, really - away from any other perspectives or options are in an even worse position.

It gets past "outside the box" and right into "beyond the pale".