Clay & Blood

 

 

I have had a couple of half baked blog ideas about Machiavelli, terracottieri and canal states – but with scant opportunities to actually use them at a table, the impetus for finishing up my notes has been lacking. This year, using my commutes for Dungeon23 purposes and joining a work mate and her friends for a bit of roleplaying, the Red Planet has been on my mind again.

 

The Terracottieri

Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth.
Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?

Soldiers sleep, soldiers eat, soldiers start mutinies. But you can’t run an empire without armies. Experiments with ­automata were not unknown during the Age of Decadence. Most were mere playthings, but some were put to more practical purposes. Like the Clay men, originally created to form the vast troupes of stage extras necessary for the city spanning plays that were in vogue among the carefree citizens of those splendid days. These ­ceramic mannequins completely lacked the nerves that human actors so frequently suffer from. And when called upon to speak, they never forgot a line. Unfortunately, they also lacked that ­special spark that turns lines, costumes, demeanor into hints of another world. Thus, they were soon banished from the stage, out of fashion and purpose. Loitering around the plazas, pulling at the covers of palanquins, begging for fresh clay.
A nuisance at best. Until war was reinvented, and old ­furnaces churned out new legions. They became the clay feet on which the Imperial peace rested, guaranteeing ­Phobos’ grasp on the Red Planet. And, incidentally, ­instrumental in ­turning an upstart general into the first (and last) emperor of the Mayfly Dynasty.
During these the latter days of the Red Planet, the techniques by which the animating principle was burned into clay are long lost. The ranks of clay soldiers have dwindled, churned down by great campaigns and dissipated by desertion. For the laws of ceramics, burned into hollow skulls to ensure absolute loyalty, have been circumvented. Sophists are in no short ­supply were everything that was once thought eternal crumbles, and through their mercenary maieutics they short circuit all but the most potent imperatives.
The remaining Terracottieri offer their services to the highest bidder. Together as a mold, or as lone wandering statues.

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Giovanni Battista Bracelli (1624)

 

 

Well, terracottieri is, perhaps, not the greatest neologism the world has ever seen. But it does mark the point where ‘imperial’ and ‘clay soldier’ diverge into different directions. When the mechanical help turns unhelpful, some people are prone to add the qualifier ‘killer’ to ‘robot’. But, as Dr Reich once famously stated, perhaps the question is not why workers go on strike but, rather, why they keep coming to work. The same could be said for the automata set to replace them. And, incidentally, Čapek who coined the word ‘robot’ in his r. u. r. had them revolt in the very same play.
A statblock, for your convenience:

terracotta soldiers
no. appearing: 2d10 (20d10 in camp) hd: 1 ac: as plate
att: 1d6 mv: as human saves as: dwarf morale: 8

 

& Some Notes on Red Planet Warfare by way of Machiavelli

Spawned out of war games, there is no lack of mass combat rules of varying complexities in and next door to roleplaying games. If you are like me, they might be a bit too much. Diplomacy is more my favoured level of abstraction here. War is, of course, a horrible thing. Complex, traumatic enough to secrete theories. Some of the most famous are Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and the no-nonsense bad boy of political thinking, Machiavelli. The scoundrel who comes from one knows not where, carving out their own principality in the patchwork of regional powers, ancient ruins, local traditions, competing factions: A characterization of old-school rpgs, that doesn't rely on the premise of a frontier but rather a very lived-in place, oversaturated with lost opportunities and lost golden ages. (An aside: Colonialism in d&d has been much debated. I'd say there's a strong case that its tropes are present in its DNA: the 'empty' frontier invariably populated by para- or subhuman peoples etc, manifest destiny coming to the  renaissance fair, though I'm less convinced about the political gravity of that fact. The ideological tail is rarely the cause of the dog's bite.)

 

 

Angelo Fabbrini (1840s)

 

 

Anyway: That unknown prince on whom M. places his hopes for Italian unification looks very similar to the newly-rolled character, down to the fact that it is a prince who often fails to achieve what she sets out to do; a failed save against poison, a random encounter that comes at just that moment when fickle Fortuna seems to smile on her. If you squint, the Pazzi Conspiracy reads as a play report. But, more importantly:

Mercenaries, says Niccoló, are reluctant to die for their employers. That is what made the wars of his time a bit of a farce. Battles ended because the losing side was quick to run away or give themselves up as prisoners. Condottieri were not overly loyal to their (not overly loyal) employers. Allies were as worried about the success of their friends as they were eager for the downfall of their enemies. And changes in fortune often gave the oppositional parties in a city a pretext and means for regime change. This mirrors the situation among the Canal states quite well, down to the looming presence of Imperial Phobos -- too weak to strengthen its grip on the Planet, but quite strong enough to annihilate a particular upstart.

The reluctance to perish in battle would, I imagine, be exacerbated when many of the mercenaries in question are made from clay. These words from Gygax should probably be the portal paragraph of any and all mass combat on the Red Planet:

 

 "Morale is checked before and after combat, basing the determination on historical precedent, just as the fighting ability in actual cases was drawn upon to calculate melee results. A loss of 'heart' is at least as serious a defeat in combat, and perhaps more so, for most battles are won without the necessity of decimation of the losing side."

Any combat resolutions should set loyalty and morale values front and center; clear victories and defeats should be exceedingly rare. Payment of troops should be presented before any mechanisms for combat resolutions.