Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Greentongue

Well, nothing that you could add would go to waste in my opinion.
There is only around 5,000 posts so far so, there should be room for a few more on this subject.
It seems like something that is useful in any game, especially one where position, appearances and rank matter a lot.
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Okay; let me take a run at this for you. This is the way Phil used the system in his games 1976 - 1988; I'll make some notes along the way. There are three basic 'career tracks' in Tsolyanu, and the other states tend to follow this same pattern - which, in turn derives from Engsvanyali practice.

Military:
'herekasa' - section of 20 soldiers; 'kasi' - cohort of 400; 'molkar' - field commander of each 'wing' of the legion; 'dritlan' - senior officer of each 'wing'; 'kerdu' - legion commander. Heavies rank mediums who rank lights, who rank missile troops who rank artillery and sappers; mercenaries are the the bottom of the stack, as they are not considered to be all that important socially.

Interestingly, this was the only rank track where Phil routinely used the Tsolyani or other 'native' languages in game play. I think that may be because we were doing a lot of military adventures, what with the Glorious General and all; normally, 'kerdu' was not used unless in a formal setting, and 'general' was used in game play.

Civil:
Governors of the little two-hex fiefs; town and small city governors, administrators of protectorates and marches, major city governors, provincial governors, Imperial officials, Imperial chancellors, the High Chancellor at Avanthar, the Seal Emperor/Empress. All of the governorships came with the title 'lord' in game play; I don't recall Phil ever really using the 'correct' word for them, unless very specifically asked what the title was.

Military officers rank civil ones, but you tread very warily when a low-level military officer is dealing with a high-level civil officer. There's a lot of "my Lord, may I suggest?" and politeness that goes on. The reverse is true, one had better be pretty high up to give a general an order, and sure that one will be backed by Avanthar for doing so. I got in trouble once for being a civil governor and telling a molkar what to do, and his dritaln quite correctly told me of for doing so. And then gave the orders to have what I wanted to happen, and we won the Battle of Anch'ke; I just hadn't gone though the right steps.

Temples: (Once again, by definition, all magic-users are priests of one temple or another.)
'magic-users' - lower circle priests; administrative priests; ritual priests; scholar-priests; High Priests, who may be of any of the three types and are responsible for the 'departments'; High Priests - who run the temple, with the bigger the temple the higher the rank they hold.

Again, Phil did not use the specific titles in game play; it was normally 'priest/priestess', 'senior priest/priestess', 'high priest/priestess'. Phil just did not use a lot of Tsolyani or others of his languages in game play; he was too busy running us ragged.

Now - having said that - Phil could, at the drop of a hat, give all sorts of wonderful titles like "Perfumer of the Nostrils of the God" to denote the office that somebody held, or the title "Disposer of Meku" for the governors of that city. He was so well versed in the titles and ranks of the cultures that he'd studied, that he could lift the titles from memory as we played. And, of course, we had no idea what any of this stuff was, as we were nowhere nearly as well read as he was. I can do this now, but I've had forty years of study and practice at it. (These days, it's Wiki, I think.)

Does this help?

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

Awesome. Thank you very much! After a long break, I started painting minis again. I have a really nice old box set of 10 Ral Partha female characters, based on Larry Elmore drawings, that I got for Christmas years ago, and I've decide to paint some as an Aridani from one of the Five Empires. Just finished my Tsolyani and I want to do a Yan Koryani next. Need to make a trip to my local art supply store this week and grab the green and a suitable red. What red do you use now? I think black is black is black when it comes to the Salarvyani so I should be ok there.
So in keeping with this motiff, the article from Dragon 6 says that the Livyani paint their armour bright colours. Are there any colours that are especially associated with Livyanu?

Shemek

I'm sorry; I missed this question, last time around.

Reds. I preferred the old Polly S 'Boxcar red' for my Mu'uglavyani troopers, as it was a nice-looking color and I was able to airbrush my original little army with it. Eventually, the boys in the other group came out with their painting guide in the troop list, and they picked usually brighter and more orange colors then I had - one of my paints schemes was used 'as is', for IX of the First, "Long Arrow". So, I tend to use Liquitex reds. grouped around their Cadmium Red Medium Hue. Other colors as needed, of course.

One of the odder little details about the writing of the army lists is that very, very few of the paint schemes were ever 'tested' on figures; while a number of them duplicate the ones that Phil gives in the original guide, most are kind of 'off the cuff', as it were. I wound up doing a lot of 'sample' cohorts of four figures for Phil to look at; he wanted to see what the 'official' paint schemes looked like before he had me paint any of them on his figures. (Or mine, for that matter.) Very few of his own figures match the 'official' schemes, as he did them long before the troop lists came out; the Dragon guide was written with the actual figures in front of him, as they even predated that article.

Blacks are not entirely blacks; I use various shades on my Salarvyani to break up the monotony, with the darker and glossier shades on armor and leather and lighter and more matte on cloth. It's all to taste, of course!

The Livyani tend to have yellow as their 'base color'; it does make them stand out from the other empires, which was the idea in the first place. It is not a 'uniform color'; it just happens to be present in a lot of units. Everything else under the sun is included; they look pretty colorful on the table top. I think this is because the country is a sort of federal system of temples, each of which clothes their troops according to their own dictates.

Originally Posted by Greentongue

A Lot!
Thanks
=

You're welcome! Happy to be of help!

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

I'm sorry; I missed this question, last time around.

Reds. I preferred the old Polly S 'Boxcar red' for my Mu'uglavyani troopers, as it was a nice-looking color and I was able to airbrush my original little army with it. Eventually, the boys in the other group came out with their painting guide in the troop list, and they picked usually brighter and more orange colors then I had - one of my paints schemes was used 'as is', for IX of the First, "Long Arrow". So, I tend to use Liquitex reds. grouped around their Cadmium Red Medium Hue. Other colors as needed, of course.

One of the odder little details about the writing of the army lists is that very, very few of the paint schemes were ever 'tested' on figures; while a number of them duplicate the ones that Phil gives in the original guide, most are kind of 'off the cuff', as it were. I wound up doing a lot of 'sample' cohorts of four figures for Phil to look at; he wanted to see what the 'official' paint schemes looked like before he had me paint any of them on his figures. (Or mine, for that matter.) Very few of his own figures match the 'official' schemes, as he did them long before the troop lists came out; the Dragon guide was written with the actual figures in front of him, as they even predated that article.

Blacks are not entirely blacks; I use various shades on my Salarvyani to break up the monotony, with the darker and glossier shades on armor and leather and lighter and more matte on cloth. It's all to taste, of course!

The Livyani tend to have yellow as their 'base color'; it does make them stand out from the other empires, which was the idea in the first place. It is not a 'uniform color'; it just happens to be present in a lot of units. Everything else under the sun is included; they look pretty colorful on the table top. I think this is because the country is a sort of federal system of temples, each of which clothes their troops according to their own dictates.

No Worries, and thank you very much for the information! This is perfect, and kind of what I had in mind.
I get what you mean about blacks. I typically use anything from a base Flat Black to a Black Grey (Anthracite) when doing military models. I guess I'll apply the same approach to the minis.
One thing I forgot to ask in my last post. What is the typical colour scheme for troops from Tsamra, Yellow and what other colour? Unfortunately I don't have the Livyani Army List book.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Hrugga

Hello Gents,

If it is not too much trouble, could you show us some of your work? For example, a figure or two of each of the Five Empires...I would love to see your work!!!

Thanks,

H:0)

PS Maybe your personal favorite...If it's not too much trouble that is.

I second this request!
It would be nice see some sample cohorts from the Five Empires. Even the smaller nations would be nice as well. Perhaps you could put it on your blog if you don't want to post it here?

Shemek

Sure; let me see what I can do. Posting here isn't an issue, I think; my dodgy Internet connection is. I'll see what I can do; we're going to be pretty housebound for the next 24 hours, due to the weather.

In the meantime, have a look at this album on my Photobucket page:

http://s1283.photobucket.com/user/ch...?sort=3&page=1

as you can see Tleku Miriya I and II as well as Serqu, Sword of the Empire in action.