Mercenaries in T2K: Thoughts and Questions

[pmulcahy11b]

It just seems to me that the idea of a mercenary might become superfluous in T2K. Military forces don't need them -- you just put them in your own military forces. Marauders are basically predatory criminals, not mercenaries. Maybe if some town hires a bunch of armed people from outside you might be able to term them mercenaries. Or maybe just hired muscle.

[jester]

Mercinaries, I was actualy thinking of the mercenary of old, such as durring the 100 years war and such, since that is what Europe would have devolved into, lots of independant cities, a return of the city state. With these cities siding with PACT or NATO or even declaring their own independance or as free cities such as Krakow. And it is in these instances when a non descript group who seems to be on no ones side would be useful, and deniable.

As for payment, return to subsistance, giving them room and board and a basic materials to do what they are assigned to. But also gfiving them a choice in spoils or a certain amount of whatever that area produces.

[sglancy12]

Mercenaries, I was actually thinking of the mercenary of old, such as during the 100 years war and such, since that is what Europe would have devolved into, lots of independent cities, a return of the city state. With these cities siding with PACT or NATO or even declaring their own independence or as free cities such as Krakow. And it is in these instances when a non descript group who seems to be on no ones side would be useful, and deniable.

I agree with you on this. These regional powers may declare broadly for NATO or the WP, but their problems are going to be local ones and they are not going be able to count on the assistance of NATO or the WP to help solve them.

Someone earlier (stainlesssteelcynic) mentioned the "free companies" of the late middle ages. I think that's an excellent example. Check out the wikipedia listing for John Hawkwood.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkwood

While the remnants of NATO and the WP wouldn't necessarily have as many reasons to employ mercenaries, these semi-independent city-states would. While the remnants of the various national governments try to maintain control of their armies, local governments, strongmen and warlords are always going to be in the market for muscle. Sure it can come in the form of hiring individual deserters, stragglers, and marauders into your force, but if you need a big force for a big job, but don't want them hanging around afterwards eating you out of house and home, you hire a free company.

They go in, do the job, get paid, get lost.

Back to business as usual for your TW2K city state.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[Legbreaker]

Is it a valid to assume Martial Law would exist in areas controlled by military forces
If so, how are mercenaries dealt with Are non-military personal allowed to carry firearms, drive vehicles (and thereby use fuel the military need), carry anything even vaguely related to combat

[sglancy12]

Is it a valid to assume Martial Law would exist in areas controlled by military forces
If so, how are mercenaries dealt with Are non-military personal allowed to carry firearms, drive vehicles (and thereby use fuel the military need), carry anything even vaguely related to combat

I think we'd have to assume that in many MilGov or CivGov (or really ANY government controlled areas) there are going to be serious restrictions on what folks who are not members of that government's armed forces can own.

Any resource the players have might be confiscated under some vague "emergency powers" proclamation. Small arms (in America, at least) would be difficult to round up. Too strong a cultural attachment. But if the players drive into town towing a 155mm howitzer, they may not get a chance to sell it to the army. It might just be "commandeered." That's what they call it when the lawful authorities steal from you.

The UK, Canada and (to my understanding) Australia have all enacted extremely limiting laws concerning personal firearms, but except in Australia (which didn't get pranged as bad as the other countries) I can't imagine the authorities being successful confiscating weapons. It would just cause unnecessary fighting at a time when everyone needs their guns to hunt and protect themselves.

Australia wouldn't be in the same position since their national government never collapsed and regional and local governments only temporarily failed and only small areas remain uncontrolled. As such, not everyone in Australia needed a firearm to make sure their bread crusts didn't get stolen by the Smegma Crazies and the Gay Boy Berzerkers. (extra points if you can cite the reference on those!)

But Canada, the UK and the USA are wrecked. Self defense is mandatory so, I can't imagine the governments trying to disarm the population completely.

Big military hardware like tanks or armored vehicles or artillery and mortar, and even belt-fed machine guns... sure, I can imagine the authorities confiscating them for official use only. Guys like Jacques Littlefieldhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Littlefield (who collects and restores tanks and armored vehicles) are going to be very sad when MilGov shows up and makes off with their museum pieces... so long as they still run.

I think that any "Free Company" is going to have to camp outside the castle walls, both literally and figuratively, or face being disarmed and their vehicles and equipment confiscated. Choosing to be in a free company is going to be a hard road. While people may need your services, they are going to covet your gear and fear you. So most arrangements are going to be exectuted at arm's length.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[Legbreaker]

Even though the government here enacted some pretty draconian laws, there are still sizable numbers of decent military weapons out there in the country. I myself know of a couple of unregistered private arsenals which would definately remain out of the hands of the authorities.

Urban firearm ownership has never been particularly high here and pistols are especially scarce. Bolt action and single shot weapons are relatively common in the country (farmers usually need something to put down sick animals or control vermin), but semi-autos with a mag of greater than 5 rounds (I think) are very hard to come by. This is not to say they don't exist - as mentioned previously, many owners did not declare and hand them in when they were made illegal about 12-13 years back.

Which makes me think as I wrote that - war had been raging for a while when that law was passed. Perhaps in the T2K timeline the restrictions were not applied and anything less than fully auto was still legal Right up until martial law was declared in an area of course....

What other laws in other countries may or may not have been passed

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The UK, Canada and (to my understanding) Australia have all enacted extremely limiting laws concerning personal firearms, but except in Australia (which didn't get pranged as bad as the other countries) I can't imagine the authorities being successful confiscating weapons. It would just cause unnecessary fighting at a time when everyone needs their guns to hunt and protect themselves.

Australia wouldn't be in the same position since their national government never collapsed and regional and local governments only temporarily failed and only small areas remain uncontrolled. As such, not everyone in Australia needed a firearm to make sure their bread crusts didn't get stolen by the Smegma Crazies and the Gay Boy Berzerkers. (extra points if you can cite the reference on those!)

Australia didn't get hit as hard in the anti-gun hysteria as the UK and Canada but we did get hit with a more insidious form of it. The anti-gun crowd here have not tried to get all guns banned at once, they have been doing it in bits and pieces and reducing what firearms you can own over the course of years. Their ultimate goal is obviously reducing us to a point where nobody owns firearms... oh except for the criminals who don't actually buy them from legitimate sources.

We're going to need those firearms to fight of those Smegma Crazies and Gay Boy Beserkers when we need to protect our guzzaline... Mad Max won't be there to save us (specifically, those gangs are from Mad Max 2)

But Canada, the UK and the USA are wrecked. Self defense is mandatory so, I can't imagine the governments trying to disarm the population completely.

I think also that most people in those countries would lie about still possessing firearms, claiming they were looted or damaged etc. etc. rather than hand over their few protective items to a "government" that can't really demonstrate that it can protect them.

[Targan]

Even though the government here enacted some pretty draconian laws, there are still sizable numbers of decent military weapons out there in the country. I myself know of a couple of unregistered private arsenals which would definately remain out of the hands of the authorities.

Yes. An amazing number of banned weapons were declared "stolen" when the really tough bans came in in Australia. In most of those cases "stolen" actually meant carefully packed away and buried by their owners.

[sglancy12]

This is not to say they don't exist - as mentioned previously, many owners did not declare and hand them in when they were made illegal about 12-13 years back.

Which makes me think as I wrote that - war had been raging for a while when that law was passed. Perhaps in the T2K timeline the restrictions were not applied and anything less than fully auto was still legal Right up until martial law was declared in an area of course....

My understanding is that the giant gun control kick off in Australia happened right after the Port Arthur Massacre... which was on April 28 1996! In the canon time line that's dead smack in the middle of the Sino-Soviet War. By October 5, 1996 you've got the Germany Reunification crisis! So maybe with the looming threat of global war and a global economic meltdown, Australian voters are not in that big a hurry to disarm themselves

I think I'd be willing to add something to my timeline to say that Australia didn't disarm in the late nineties. At least not to the extent that it has. Personally I think that Australia will hold together better with a legally armed populace than without one post Twilight War, even if they are not a direct target for nukes. An armed populace combined with a functional, popular and elected government authority will keep the hooliganism to a minimum.


A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[sglancy12]

We're going to need those firearms to fight of those Smegma Crazies and Gay Boy Beserkers when we need to protect our guzzaline... Mad Max won't be there to save us (specifically, those gangs are from Mad Max 2)

Of course the Australian gets it first. I should have asked the question while you guys were asleep just to give my fellow Americans a fair chance at answering it first.

And nice to see you called the movie by it's proper name too.

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[Targan]

My understanding is that the giant gun control kick off in Australia happened right after the Port Arthur Massacre... which was on April 28 1996! In the canon time line that's dead smack in the middle of the Sino-Soviet War. By October 5, 1996 you've got the Germany Reunification crisis! So maybe with the looming threat of global war and a global economic meltdown, Australian voters are not in that big a hurry to disarm themselves

I agree but as Leg said earlier there has never been a high rate of firearm ownership in Australia's urban areas.

I think I'd be willing to add something to my timeline to say that Australia didn't disarm in the late nineties. At least not to the extent that it has. Personally I think that Australia will hold together better with a legally armed populace than without one post Twilight War, even if they are not a direct target for nukes. An armed populace combined with a functional, popular and elected government authority will keep the hooliganism to a minimum.

I agree here too. Basically it means you would still have sizeable numbers of pump action shotguns and semi automatic rifles in rural areas, and more handguns in urban areas than IRL.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Personally I think that with the state of the world in the Twilight setting, it's unlikely that the events leading to the gun buyback in Australia would have occured and most firearms owners would still have their legitimately purchased items.
As for more handguns in the urban areas, I would disagree. I don't think the government, even with the state of the world, would condone more handguns simply because it would take some time (or something truly drastic) to convince them to allow the public to have a concealable weapon.
Most urban firearms owners in Australia had rifles or shotguns because generally it was a lot harder to qualify for a handgun.

The other thing to consider with this is that while many rural folk had a rifle or two and a shotgun, many urban firearms owners had many more than this - in New South Wales it wasn't at all unusual for an individual to own from 5-20rifles and shotguns. Queensland and New South Wales had very few limits on ownership and the vast majority of unlicenced firearms in the rest of Australia came from these two states. Queensland in particular did a booming trade in guns for marijuana with Papua New Guineans fighting against the Indonesian occupation forces in Western New Guinea (the Indonesians formerly called it Irian Jaya) up until the mid-1990s (i.e. the gun buyback time).

It's also worth noting that Queensland and Tasmania allowed the ownership of various semi-auto military style rifles such as the AR-15, SKS, M1 Carbine, civilian versions of the G3, HK33 & M14 and also the L1A1. This may have also been true for some other states like Victoria but Queensland & Tasmania are the only ones I'm sure of.

[Legbreaker]

Even though NSW allowed semi-auto military weapons, it did not allow crossbows and inflicted very harsh penalties upon those found with so much as a bolt or string in their possession...

Bows on the other hand were totally uncontrolled.

[sglancy12]

Okay, nice segway into Australian Firearms ownership... AND it's not completely off topic, but let's try and ease this thread back onto the topic of Mercenaries in the post Twilight War world.

I don't want to derail the thread.

Having said that, how did you guys have the authorities treat groups of players who were running around tooled up like panzergrenadiers As a threat As a new source of draftees As a God send All of the above

I see the PACT authorities under the influence of the Soviets being much more inflexible when it comes to dealing with their ex-soldiers. You are either deserters to be shot or you are stragglers who better try and look happy to be back under the banner of the Red Army.

Also, if some ex-NATO guys rolled up on some PACT loyalists, I doubt very much if the Comrades are going to listen to the part about how you're not in the enemy army anymore. Maybe if the Soviet commander has already seen to it that his Commissar's been fragged, he might be more reasonable.

In Communist/Soviet controlled areas, I'm expecting the Commissars to be doing a lot of dumb totalitarian things... not just taking all the spare parts, lubricant, refined fuel and working vehicles, but maybe even "requisitioning" 1/2 the village's ammo supply "to support the glorious People's Red Army!"

Or worse, demanding that the locals use more and more of their food crop to distill more and more fuel for the authorities vehicles... perhaps bringing the area to the edge of famine.

And what about your players how have your players reacted when the ran across another group of heavily armed "detached" soldiers Do they seem them as kindred spirits or do they see them as marauders How do they approach each other Do they even try to talk or do they just start shooting

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[Legbreaker]

In my experience players tend to shoot first and strip the bodies later....