21.2 The concept of legions and command-set thereof.
** NOTE: ANYTHING YOU SEE WHERE THE SYNTAX HAS () BRACKETS AROUND IT, THIS MEANS THE COMMAND MAY NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR MORTAL USE AND IS STILL UNDER TEST CONDITIONS **
SECTION I: OVERVIEW OF LEGIONS, CREATING AND MAKING UNIQUE A LEGION
The concept of a 'legion' is a convenient way of referring to groups of soldiers/workers collected under the banner of a city, guild or individual. Legions have an ideal size (denoted by its type), a constituent personell (e.g. cityfolk or guild specialist) and, most importantly, a wide range of trained abilities and equipment for use of those sworn under its banner. The main command LEGION is used for all manner of things relating to these groups and it is only when you wish to employ specialist skills, set about marching/moving locations or step onto the battlefield/begin melee that you will need to explore beyond the list below. Almost your entire military/fieldworker personell preparations/training/arranging into suitable structure is covered here.
Syntax: LEGION LIST MINE/GUILD/CITY.
Provides you with a list of legions created under your banner, or that of your city or guild. Open to all fighters, duellists and pacifists alike.
Syntax: LEGION WHERE MINE/CITY/GUILD.
Allows you to list out all legions of appropriate loyalty/constituent specialists together with information on their size-type, their present captain, their current state-of-affairs and, if possible, the location of the standard bearer in the land. Thus, unlike LEGION LIST, it is possible to use LEGION WHERE to manage a spread of legions across the largescale battlefield of the land in addition to those in barracks undergoing training/exercises.
Syntax: LEGION INFO <legion>.
To gain more detailed information about the specified legion, its type, size and location of those individuals attached to its banner. Most importantly, however, it gives you details of specific training ongoing, equipment, rations, morale, and its specialist skills. Available to all: fighters, duellists and pacifists alike.
Syntax: LEGION NEW <new legion name> <city or guild>.
To create a new legion name and set it under a certain banner - be that city or guild. New legions always begin with the size of 'party' and must accumulate a certain number of individuals before it can move onto the first of the significant sizes, the 'company'. Your name should be something original. It cannot clash with an existing city, village, area, guild or Avalonian's name.
Syntax: LEGION TITLE <legion> <title>.
Legions have a single word name, which you refer to when interacting with them - in the field, in barracks, etc - and a title, generally referring to their greater purpose. Examples of titles might be: Guardians of the Night, Defenders of the Faith, Narl's Mercenary Scouts.
Syntax: LEGION RENAME <legion> <new legion name>.
Renames an existing legion (providing it lies under your banner) with a new, ideally more significant short-name. You cannot name a legion after a guild, a city, an area or village, or one of your fellow Avalonians.
Syntax: LEGION HISTORY <legion> or LEGION JOURNAL <legion>.
Allows you to review the documented history or journal of a specific legion. Those with high rank and/or deep connections to the legion will be able to view its complete journal, including all records of past engagements, expansions and contractions, specialist skills gained and lost, etc. LEGION JOURNAL therefore is the more comprehensive info. Others, if the legion is sufficiently open and you possess the status, may review the scribed history: the LEGION HISTORY option. Scribed history is penned by the legionaires themselves and tend to focus instead on a narrative of the legion's past, present and future.
Syntax: LEGION NARRATE <legion> <comment>.
Using the NARRATE command an individual with sufficient rank or closeness to the specified legion may begin a continuous entry sequence somewhat akin to writing a letter or bulletin board message. This is used for writing longer entries into the legion histories. These histories are penned in secrecy and will be added only to the private annals of the legion's ongoing records. It is not to be confused with the semi-public LEGION HISTORY or LEGION INSCRIBE book of record. NOTE: presently this date stamps but does not allow pages of entry. It will do so as soon as warfare is continentwide returned to us.
Syntax: LEGION NOTE <legion> <private note>.
or LEGION INSCRIBE <legion> <semi-public inscription>.
One would use the NOTE command to add a private, legionnaires only note to the ongoing permanent recorded history of the specified legion or the INSCRIBE option for those with rather broader 'right of access' to pen a semi-public inscripion. Note, along with any entry in the closed-history of the legion, will only be viewable by those of high enough rank or close long-term connections with said legion (e.g. its creator or its captain). Inscriptions are always viewable by those of broadly high enough rank/stature and are often displayed publicly if the legion's records are ever inspected or placed out openly for all to see.
SECTION II: CLASSIFYING YOUR LEGION BY SIZE-TYPE AND DETERMINING LEADERSHIP
Syntax: LEGION SIZES.
Reviews the various legion sizes and the number of individuals required to maintain a legion with the advantages of certain size statuses.
Syntax: LEGION DISBAND <legion>.
Disbands an existing legion (providing it lies under your banner), removing its name, title and very existence from the land. The legion must not have any individuals sworn to its standard.
Syntax: LEGION EXPAND <legion>.
Assuming you have sufficient numbers sworn loyal to the specified legion you may order its expansion, thereby commanding it to assume a more efficient hierarchy appropriate to its size. Consider the distinction between hundreds of ill-organised folk in a crowd contrasted with the same hundreds structured into a well-defined structure. It becomes more potent, faster to execute commands, more effective in every way. See LEGION SIZES for information on the structures available to you and remember that a legion must have attained a sufficient number to reform into the superior-size hierarchy.
Syntax: LEGION CONTRACT <legion>.
As the numbers sworn loyal to the specified legion fall below certain thresholds you will need to contract the structure accordingly. See LEGION SIZES for info on the specific numbers for the various hierarchies most appropriate. Ensuring the correct hierarchy structure for your legion size maximises its efficiency, impacts positively on each and every one of its actions (both potency and pace of operation). Contraction requires the legion to be sitting at the low number boundary of its current structure.
Syntax: LEGION LIEUTENANT <legion> <new lieutenant>/<guild or city>.
Designates an individual as lieutenant of the specified legion. This can be done by the legion's overall commander/creator (or others, depending on ASSIGNed hierarchy paradigm as described below) or by its existing lieutenant (passing the baton of leadership). If you specify a guild or city to take over lieutenantship you leave the post open for suitably qualified folks to assume control whenever appropriate. Lieutenant rank is suitable for legions of size company or party; those of greater numbers must be under the command of individuals of superior rank. Lieutenants may only command larger groups if the group has grown from smaller size under his/her stewardship - and thus remains singularly loyal. Lieutenants have access to the commandset as documented in HELP LIEUTENANT.
Syntax: LEGION ASSIGN <legion> <hierarchy paradigm>.
The hierarchy paradigm simply refers to the structure expected by the legion into which it will settle for the purposes of taking commands. Thus one may have a regiment solely loyal to its founder and scornful of orders from any other, whatever their rank; or an open-minded company happy to receive orders from any not definitively a declared enemy. See HELP DISPATCHES for the comprehensive order scripts available for dispatches, effectiveness and suitability to be dictated by a combination of your personal stature and the legion's assigned hierarchy paradigm as listde below.
"military" fits neatly into a guild or city military structure, with commanders appropriate to the legion size and denomination.
"fieldworkers" is structured, for conveience and efficiency, along military lines but without the oft necessity of combat readiness/experience to command.
"independent" turns aside from formal military structures or traditional authority figures, trusting instead legion founder and inner circle only.
"personal" allows the group to be part of a structure but determines it to place personal allegience (such as to its founder) above all and disallow many more fundamental orders save from its founder.
"open" declares the group open to commands from all non-enemies.
"authority" establishes the importance of authority figures (e.g. Prince, High Constable, Guildmaster) giving equal measure of command to such figures as founders or designated commander.
"mercenary" allows for a full military structure and command hierarchy but without fixed loyalty and thus, depending on circumstances, said loyalty can become fluid - self-preserving - more robust than blind adherence to orders.
SECTION III: TRAINING SPECIALIST SKILLS, EQUIPPING LEGIONS - THE ROAD TO VICTORY
Syntax: LEGION POTENTIAL <legion>/<city>/<guild>
Depending on your legion type (city or guild specialist) they will have access to a wide range of abilities useful in the field of battle or other circumstances about the land. This command allows you to view the potentialities of the specified legion or, if you specify a guild or city, the base potential of those denominations of legions (not taking into account any factors that are specific to an individual legion). All have access to this command, fighters, pacifists and duellists alike.
Syntax: LEGION TRAIN <legion> <specialist skill> <target potency>
Commands the commencement of a training period for the specified legion. You will need the correct tools for the training and the legion must be in safely in-barracks to be unmolested while the training is carried out. See HELP TRAINING for comprehensive details of the skills a legion-type can gain; these skills will depend on whether it is a city or guildspecialist legion. See your LEGION POTENTIAL command above to see the extent of training possible. It is slightly faster for a legion to learn less skills concurrently and they enjoy more rest periods in between the marginally lower number of sessions required to advance potency in a specific skill. Legions gain potency more slowly as the higher eschelons of a skill are reached; thus a legion will take more time to learn the challenging rigours of 70% to 75% in a specialist-skill than it would the relatively simple lessons required to move from 5% to 10% in the same.
Legions train one specialist-skill at a time, in real terms, despite having the capacity to carry out training orders to progress numerous skills concurrently. They will progress each skill at a similar pace but focus, at any given instance, on just one. Each percent of potency (and you will find certain types of guildsmen or cityfolk are delimited by maximums in this or that specialist-skill) is advanced via successful completion of a number of sessions; the number of sessions per potency advance increases as explained earlier. Some skills affect session requirements (e.g. alacrity reduces sessions required to advance potency). Do bear in mind that timings here are approximate and where a legion states a certain number of minutes to completion of a session, this is a rough figure and can vary by a certain percentage, as can session numbers required and impact of circumstances/brethren-skills on the training. Nothing is so exact to be precisely formulaic and the most successful military minds factor such unpredictabilities into their tactics and/or scenarios.
** AT PRESENT TRAINING IN SPECIALIST SKILLS IS FREE OF CHARGE AND REQUIRES NO EQUIPMEN OR PRECONDITIONS **
Syntax: LEGION FINISH <legion> <specialist skill>.
Declares the training of the specified legion complete, thereby freeing the legion to be employed at other tasks. Training, while it is going on, is completely occupying of a legion's attentions. You will need to finish all of its training sessions to regain quick responsive control of the legion for future commands.
(Syntax: LEGION TEACH <legion> and LEGION CONCLUDE <legion>.)
The top pair of commands is used for you, the individual specialist (doubtless a fine example of whichever guild or city in which you ply your trade) to augment the designated training of a specific legion by dint of your personal expertise and experience. A top-ranked guildsman can convey information faster and thus reduce training times and/or allow the legion to reach higher potency than would otherwise have been possible.
(Syntax: LEGION BERATE <legion> and LEGION ENCOURAGE <legion>.)
There are two demeanour one may take with a legion and its effectiveness will depend entirely on the circumstances, environment and recent history. Berating a legion is generally considered a kick-up-the-rear, shaking lethargy from lazy pampered bones, waking a group to the urgency of impending training, deployment or battle. Encouragement, on the other hand, works less well in comfortable surrounds (it tends to stupify) and instead has its best impact in hostile, difficult, sometimes tragic circumstances; the voice of a kindly fellow sufferer or the boom of a leader undaunted at the head of his or her troop. Although morale effects are temporary, one should never underestimate their role in melee, in speedy marching to and from the field, in carrying out orders unshirking, etc.
Syntax: LEGION PROGRESS <legion>.
Reviews the current training schedule of your specified legion, details of the specialist skills being learned and, most usefully, the extent of its progress towards the stated goals. Any can issue this command, be they pacifist, duellist or figher status. You will be informed how many sessions (if any) remain before the next advance of potency percentage in all those specialist-skills being trained and, in summary, which skill (if any) is presently the group's focus alongside an approximation of how long before the session is complete. Legions work through each specialist-skill they are told to train up, one by one, in no particular order until they have completed a session for each one. Once all have had a session the cycle begins again, progress duly updated.
Syntax: LEGION PROGRESS <legion> <specialist-skill>.
Those with sufficient rank over the specified legion can go a step further than the broad summary gained by the LEGION PROGESS use above. If you specify a skill by name, e.g. LEGION PROGESS GUARDIANS4 ALACRITY you will be given far more detailed information its specific purpose, usages and the extent to which your legion's potency affords you access to new commands/abilities. Many specialist-skills are background and simply affect legion performance without the need for commands to be dispatched but others do require special orders - particularly the more esoteric, higher-end specialities. LEGION PROGRESS is, therefore, somewhat akin to an amalgamation of doing a HELP and AB on one of your character's personal skills: gains a broad but skill-specific info document and ability by ability list dependant on potency level attained. See HELP TRAINING for a specialist-skills list and do not ignore LEGION POTENTIAL when determining training and judging progression - it is very easy to set a legion training beyond its maximum capacity in a certain skill; doing so wastes the advanced (and therefore more time-consuming) lessons on a group incapable of reaping any practical benefit.
* NOTE: AT PRESENT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MAKE-UP OF A LEGION AS WELL AS ITS PAST HISTORY SPECIFICS ARE NOT AVAILABLE FOR VIEWING. SOON THE LATTER WILL BE BUT IT IS UNDECIDED WHETHER THE FORMER WILL BE SHOWN OR WHETHER GREATER SKILL MIGHT NOT BE ENCOURAGED BY ENSURING LEADERS MUST GAIN A FEEL FOR THEIR TROOPS, KNOW THEIR SITUATION, RECENT EVENTS - AND MAKE DECISIONS ACCORDINGLY, WITHOUT EASY POINTERS **
Syntax: LEGION EQUIP <legion> <equipment>.
Bestows an item of equipment on the specified legion. There are various reasons for loading up a legion with items of inventory. Firsly many of the specialist skills require equipment to carry out or enjoy improved effectiveness when used with a specific item (legions automatically attempt to employ their inventories to best possible result unless otherwise instructed). Secondly powerful legions may be used to transport valuables across the land more safely than a troop of vulnerable individuals, particularly large-size commodities that would be otherwise too cumbersome for easy maneuver. Thirdly, legions benefit in other ways from certain important components whose use is not covered by a specialist skill: food, shelter/bedding, healing herbs or potions, etc.
Syntax: LEGION UNEQUIP <legion> <equipment>.
Removes an item of equipment from the specified legion. Use this with care as you risk removing from a dutiful legion an item pivotal to it carrying out its orders or utilising its specialist skills to their maximum effect (e.g. take all the quivers from a legion skilled at archery and you will find your archers suddenly little or no use on the battlefield). Morale is also adversely affected if important items (such as food, bedding, et al) are taken back once given over. There are, however, many situations where relieving a legion of its equipment is the best course of action: while they are in barracks and others in the field have greater need, for instance, or, more ambivalently, when one legion is deemed to be on the verge of utter defeat and risks losing valuable artifacts that might make the difference between another group's survival or route. One may doom the first legion to certain vanquish but if, in doing so, the second has twice the chance of prevailing; who can argue the military logical? Such decisions are not for the faint-hearted and it is well-worth experimenting with balances of apposite equipment versus overequipping, overencumbering or overpampering (all of which sap morale) and fighting spirit.
SECTION IV: ASSEMBLING AND DEPLOYING INDIVIDUALS IN AND OUT OF LEGIONS
Syntax: LEGION ASSEMBLE <legion> FILL/<number> [<guild name/city name>].
Syntax: PV <legion> FILL/<number> as a shortcut for the above.
Commands freshly enlisted untrained individuals into the specified legion. This assumes there exists in the locale both a source of privates and a group in existence under the legion's banner. If you have no-one under the legion's banner in the land it must be begun, on just the first occasion, by specifying a guild or city-name as per syntax above. This way the privates are taken from the correct guildsfolk or citizens. Note: you may use the FILL directive on pre-existing legions to bring in the maximum possible privates to swell its numbers to the edge of the next size-type up; ready for possible expansion.
Syntax: LEGION DISMISS <legion> <number> [<locale direction/CENTRE>].
Ejects privates from the specified legion thereby increasing remaining legionnaires' equipment, rations and speed of operations (as is always the case with a smaller group). You will, however, risk losing some of your trained talent since in dismissing anyone from a regimented, orderly environment to off-duty status takes its toll on their abilities. Thus you will lose a portion of the legion's specialist skill prowess, despte those you retain gaining, on average, as individuals. If you were to go so far as to dismiss each and every last member of the legion you will effecively be disbanding it as an active presence, returning all its equipment to the decommissioned group. Be warned, though: doing this also abandons all the specialist skills accumulated over the legion's active lifespan.
Syntax: LEGION SPLIT <master legion> <destination empty legion banner>.
Use this command should you wish to reduce the size of an individual legion while retaining all the expertise and experience/training picked up by those sworn to follow its banner. You begin with your large first legion and then find a second legion banner, preferably newly created or two or less individiuals within. The splitting will then halve the size of the master legion, shifting the oath of fealty for the other half to serve under the new banner. Although both legions will be of equal size and thus, in theory, weaker in any weight of numbers clash, they will share without loss the specialist skills, training and battlefield experience garnered during the unmolested existence of the original. Note, however, that splitting legions is not always a settling experience and there are sometimes occasional individuals who get lost in the process; fortunately these tend to be the ones with the least specialist skills.
Syntax: LEGION MERGE <master legion> <secondary legion>.
This command is a simple one. Providing you are addressing two legions of the same guild or city and neither are constituted entirely of unskilled privates (those without having ANY specialist skill knowledge) you can issue the order for them to merge. You will need to have authority sufficient for this command over both legions but, if successful, quickly rearranges the previously smaller legions into a larger single legion, merging (where possible) the skill prowess and exchanging (as much as can be conveyed) the advantages of past experiences/morale. Merging a less skilled legion into a more skilled master will result, as you would doubtles have surmised, in a larger resultant legion with skills proportionally lower as a result of the merge. Note, however, that merging itself is not an experience all remain unaffected by and there is a net loss (albeit only minor if the merge circumstances are carefully set-up) of specialist skill percentiles across the newly enlarged group.
(Syntax: LEGION REQUISITION <master legion> <legion to supply expertise> <percentage>.
This command allows a leader to gather expertise from a sympathetic typically larger, more advanced legion (or requisition talent from an inferior, less useful one). You specify a percentage to requisition. The percentage demanded will determine how many of those individuals from the supply legion must shift allegience to join your master legion, thereby increasing the master legion's specialist skill potency by a factor determined by its size relative to the numbers arriving. Thus a huge master legion requisitioning from a tiny supply legion will find its specialist percentages little altered while a small 'master' legion requisitioning from a vast corps of knowledgeable specialists will need relatively few to make significant improvements.)
Do bear in mind, however, that there are optimum sizes for legions - regiment/brigade by default - optimums affected by leader prowess, history, circumstances, terrain, legion recent engagements, etc. Take all of the archers from even an enormous group on the front-line (and engaged in combat) and you run the risk of ensuring its defeat, despite its numbers and otherwise high specialist skills; simply as a consequent of poor timing and removing crucial individuals from a situation of great need into one of less. Such choices often make or break a military campaign. It is not for naught that an individual's military history is so respectfully perused, their successes lauded, their failures lamented and feared...
It is never possible to have a mixed single legion of guild specialists and city soldiers/fieldworkers, nor can you shortcut training or the invaluable boost of real engagement experience - but you can try to tread a line between having a single crack regiment with enormous skills and experience (and an army of uneducated ill-equipped novices) and spreading the regiment's relatively small numbers in and around your entire military/society to gain the most possible training, for the maximum number of people, in the shortest time. Every military's conundrum.
** FLASH NOTES AND RULES TO REMAIN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE **
- LEGIONS WILL ALWAYS OBEY ORDERS, NO MATTER MORALE/EQUIPMENT/LEADER HISTORY
- LEGIONS REQUIRE NO EQUIPMENT TO TRAIN IF THEIR BASE POTENTIAL EXISTS
- LEGIONS DEPLOY, MOVE-ABOUT AND ACT RELATIVELY QUICKLY WITH ONLY MINOR DELAYS AFTER EXECUTING A COMMAND. THIS MAY NOT ALWAYS BE SO SPEEDY.
- SEE HELP DISPATCHES FOR ADVANCED/CIRCUMSTANCE-BASED ORDERS
- GLOBESTAVES, FARSIGHT and SPHERES OF INFLUENCE SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED SEPARATELY FOR THEIR INDIVIDUAL IMPACT ON THE VARIOUS ASPECTS OF TROOPS AND WARFARE
- INITIALLY THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOLDIER/TROOP AND FIELDWORKER/CRAFTSMEN EXISTS IN A FUNDAMENTAL SENSE (e.g. ANIMISTS BREED FIELDWORKERS while CAVALIERS BREED SOLDIERS) but THESE DISTINCTIONS WILL NOT BE DESCRIPTIVELY EVIDENT IN MANY CIRCUMSTANCES. PRIORITY IS PRESENTLY GIVEN TO THE FORMER - IN TERMS OF DESCRIPTION - DESPITE EQUAL ATTENTION PAID TO SPECIALIST SKILLS OF ALL PROFESSIONS. THOSE OF A PACIFIST BENT MAY FEEL FREE TO ALERT A DEITY ABOUT ANY DESCRIPTIONS INAPPROPRIATE TO THEIR WORKERS/CRAFTSMEN.
- DEAD LEGIONS LOSE SPECIALIST SKILL PROWESS PRECISELY ACCORDING TO PERCENTAGE LOSSES, WITHOUT REFERENCE TO FORMATION OR SPECIALITY; FOR THE PRESENT ONLY.
- Warfare is covered in help section 21, presently undergoing a rewrite to bring it up to date with the major recent evolution. See HELP 21 for section list.
- HELP WAR and HELP TRAINING have been amended with information relevant to the new warfare system. HELP COMMANDER and HELP VANGUARD cover individual's taking
command of a legion. HELP DISPATCH, HELP GOALS and HELP MISSIONS detail the orders and commands available to be given to a legion, often in advance, generally dependant on a set of circumstances juxtaposed with a mandated demeanour/approach (e.g. aggressive demeanour, sadistic approach meets the circumstances of an enemy in a weaker position: end result - aggressor presses home advantage until weaker enemy is utterly destroyed).
Good luck.
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