On Wed, 15 May 2013, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
If I understand the look and feel correctly, there will be small isolated
oasis settlements. They will have their own militia at least in practice,
because troops stationed there for long durations, likely have a tendency
to go native. They will protect the settlement from raiders (the primitive
people and plain outlaws) and act as local security forces.
Large cities near the poles, smaller hamlets as you go out.
This militia thing is a two-edged sword -- yes, it keeps the best troops
of the central government from growing loyal to the regions, but it also
means that the regions are allowed/encouraged to raise their own troops,
unquestionably loyal to the settlements.
It's an academic discussion now anyway, because you are not the GM, but
the impression i got was the setup of a third world country, where troops
are more loyal to their commander, then to their goverment. There you
can't really control remotely stationed troops anyway for long periods of
time.
I might have missunderstood the setup.
The commandos might very well all come from one or a few tribes of the
primitive people, that have some sort of loyality bond to goverment
figures and exchange services for high tech equipment. Or there is a long
tradition of members of that tribe serving the military (kinda Gurkhas).
Won't work. Even dictatorships rely on the non-resistance of the majority
of the population. ("15% for, 15% against, 70% don't give a damn and go
with the current government.") Hiring the desert tribes would destroy the
legitimacy.
Ethnic militias, that might formally be part of the army seem to work in
third world nations. And some goverment officials having their own elite
troop, that is loyal to them personally and acts de facto independent of
normal command structures, sometimes by some ethnic bond is something that
i can see to work in an autocratic goverment.
It should not be a pure mercenary relationship and you need to spin the
story right (they are heroic nomad warriors, who nobely fight for what is
good and true and thus for the goverment, as opposed to thoose other
tribes, who are sheep steeling scum).
I don't think the hirering Tuareg mercenaries was really a problem for the
Ghaddafi regime for instance.
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