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Friday, September 11, 2009

[RPG] Origins of Martial Backgrounds-

When the Ancients, the First Parents, fell from the sky in the War in the Heavens, they brought with them a diverse range of martial traditions dating from millennia before, and millions of worlds amid the infinite Empyrean.
Because of the haphazard manner in which they tumbled to Urutsk from the great heights of the Space Beyond the Sky <Aya 'Eye-Ah'>, the variety of troops and armed units became so dispersed that individuals or detachment-sized remnants of squads and larger groups simply became associated with enclaves of other survivors.
From this jumble of civil servants, constabulary, home guard from dozens of environments, to elite and specialised warfighters, isolated societies cobbled together their individual tables of organisation, training, and deployment as Black Winter set in with its scouring celestial wind of space debris and plasma storms.

In some locales, due to the distribution of more favourable geographic features, limited surface activity was possible over the time-forgotten span of the Scourge. However, the vast majority of the scattered Imperial cantons were forced literally underground and expanded their holdings over the centuries.
It was not long before the tunnelling unearthed and awakened long dormant creatures and monstrous civilisations as recent as their own, also escaped to Urutsk. These wars, The Onyx Battle , never truly ended. It was only the gospel report of the Scourge's cessation that allowed Humanity to flee the Stygian depths for the sunlit world of the surface.

While certain kingdoms and other cultures did meet during that long period, few had the resources to maintain larger communities and had often kept the contact secret from their constituents. Now upon the surface, the enclaves and empires of thirty or more generations removed cousins gradually were reunited.
Naturally, the grand traditions of the Imperium made the re-integration of the disparate colonies more easily possible. Of course, there were those who desired no part of the resurrected behemoth that had created the Cataclysm, and from these 'deserters' came the first intra-Human wars.
But Fate was kind to renew the enmities with the non-Human, and in some cases, also the Allied Peoples (human-like aliens). More often than not, Human enemies were brought past their bickering and resource grabs to unite briefly against their common foes.

Through these various organic mechanisms of transmission and re-implementation, there became a great commonality to Human military endeavours that was retained as various groups spread out to seed the barren planet with animal and plant life from their long-destroyed homeworlds and others once held within the Imperium's grasp.
From the hereditary melange that had defined the Core of the Imperium ('The Sphere of Suns'), as had been recorded in myths of the long vanished past, Humanity became a species of multiple peoples. As the Human pool of bloods split and refined, specialised, and re-introduced other groups, the ethnicities of Urutsk came into being in only a few hundred years. With these divisions, martial procedures changed and were lost to time and replaced with more ideal methodologies and practical measures as suited each group's particular needs.

As the planet grew lush and green, as the rains fed the multitudes with blue and white-tipped marsh grains and fattened game animals, in many cases, the non-human races began to find more ideal conditions above ground, and expanded rapidly -- often out-breeding humans by several generations.
These groups usually fell upon each other as readily as upon Humans, but in some cases, great bands or more subtle confederacies were formed, and these both were a thorn in Humanity's side for much of the Mad Spring.

4 comments:

  1. Aiiieee! You said "warfighter!"

    I have no idea where that word comes from. As far as I can tell, Raytheon Corp. made it up. But it doesn't make any sense: firefighters fight fires, that is, they attempt to extinguish flames. Soldiers do not fight wars; they prosecute them. In the absence of fire-fighters you still have fires, but in the absence of combatants, one does not still have wars.

    The rest of your post was cool, though. Have you read "The Sunset Warrior" by Eric Von Lustbader? If not, I think you would really enjoy it.

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  2. Yahzi,

    Presumably, that is the same context that the term is meant to be understood: Someone battling warfare, not simply prosecuting Congress' call to intervene in a specific theatre for a fixed duration and for a specific cause. I don't necessarily hold to that that definition, but in the HRS field, that jargon is utilised, and it occasionally flavours and informs my word choices.

    Thank you for your complement.

    No, I haven't read that series, although I have debated it a few times.

    Thanks for commenting,

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  3. I agree that's why they're trying to do: convert soldiers into peacekeepers by word magic. That's just... weird.

    Soldiers do keep the peace, of course. If you have enough heavily armed soldiers, things tend to be really peaceful. The Romans understood this. Surprisingly, Einstein did not.

    Still, this is the first time I've heard the word outside of a Raytheon building. Did you get it from your security work or from reading military literature? I'd love to know how this meme is spreading. :D

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  4. Doh! I missed a sentence in your post. Read check = fail.

    It's probably because Raytheon sells equipment to the security industry, too. Which explains why they use "warfighter" instead of "soldier": their market includes non-soldiers. Like the muhajideen.

    Maybe Raytheon should just stick to selling to legitimate, recognized national defense organizations. Then they wouldn't have to use funny marketing language. :D

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