Brainstorming here... brainstorming...
ewancummins wrote:Technology and tactics do matter, and military science may advance just as any other field of knowledge. The gap between Drakov's armies and some of his opponents is much smaller than what existed between the Zulus and the British, of course, but it is still significant. It tends to offset the advantages Falkovnia has in food production and a large population, IMO.
Well, the Zulus were also living in terrain ill-suited for cultivation of crops and raising a significant population. It's one thing to subdue a relatively small population of confederated hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers with a campaign of decisive victories. (Vide immigrants vs. natives in the North American campaigns of the British and French.) As China has proven again and again throughout history, it's quite another thing to subjugate a massive population geometrically inflated through centuries of better cropland and centralized authority. In pre-Industrial history, it's been "conquered" twice by non-Han ethnicities - the Jin (Mongols) and the Qing (Manchus) and in each case, the invading culture largely assimilated with the Han majority within two generations.
In the post-Industrial world, China's centralized authority was aloof and impotent, as was the case during the last imperial Qing dynasty, and generally this is seen as the beginning of the end - a period after which China could no longer just "absorb" invaders and convert them to Chinese cultural practices. Even then, the British, French, Germans, Americans, Russians, and Japanese still limited their colonial ambitions to coastal towns and cities - knowing full well that they simply lacked the manpower to subjugate the interior never mind their rifles and cannon. A century later, the Japanese came with mortars, tanks, aircraft carriers, battleships, and machine guns - and they
still restricted themselves to the coastal towns and cities. (When they finally made their late campaign inland, their lines of communication extended beyond easy defense and the campaign bogged down as losses outnumbered replacements.) This was during a period of time when the Chinese Nationalist Army under Chiang Kai-shek was still fielding large numbers of conscripts armed with swords and knives.
Falkovnia may or may not be like this. Either way, having gunpowder gives your side a significant advantage... but as you point out, it does not automatically ensure victory. Whether the difference is close enough for Falkovnia to overcome through numbers, training, and tactical flexibility is something you'll have to decide for yourself.
Gunpowder weapons of this era still share much of the same parameters as archery. Reloading is slow, and aiming is still unreliable enough that you're best off prevailing through mass of numbers rather than individual skill. You're better off firing and reloading cyclically, so you need a relatively unharassed, calm place on the battlefield to do this, and advancing while doing this is difficult (and this doesn't disappear until the invention of rounds where the primer and bullet are encased in the same mass - I don't have my book with me but I'm not sure any nation in Ravenloft has this yet - it seems more like a Gothic Earth tech level to me).
These elements mean a gunpowder force may prevail in a given defense of a set battle: say, a pitched battle on a field, or a castle. Against immobile targets like forts, they can bring a very concentrated amount of firepower to bear at safe ranges outside of arrow and crossbow fire. But they're less useful on the offense, especially if the defender is on familiar territory and decides to refuse direct engagement - because of the reloading issue. Once you've spent your shot, you're so vulnerable reloading that you need another row to cover for you, and rows are impractical when advancing through enemy territory other than plains or grassland.
If Falkovnia is facing an invading force of gunpowder units, the first few stinging defeats will teach them a few important lessons: a) massed cavalry charges are useless - save your cavalry for evasive attacks, feints, ambushes, and flanks. b) retreat whenever the enemy has time to prep a musket line or cannon line, c) destroy their lines of supply to deprive them of their powder and shot as early as you can, d) sabotage their powder stores - this can be as quiet as perforating the sheets keeping them dry, or as loud as a torch in the battery, e) massed-fire formations (archery or muskets) are highly dependent on key leaders in a way that every-man-for-himself melee combat may not be - assassinate or poison or bribe away the main leaders and the effect on enemy effectiveness will be profound.
These are only a few I can think of. Chinese military thought has Sun Zi's "Art of War" and Zhuge Liang's "36 Stratagems" for further reading if you're interested. Note that these are
millennia older than gunpowder and are still being studied by corporate and military executives today - partially because they examine indirect ways of wearing down an enemy beyond face-to-face combat.
ewancummins wrote:It's almost as if Drakov's curse is to be unable to learn new military tactics, tools, strategies, etc- mirroring Azalin's curse of being unable to learn new spells.
Of course, in any campaign where Drakov is hidebound and irrational, then pretty much everything I've written above is irrelevant. Sadly, this interpretation seems actually faintly feasible, given his bogeyman portrayal in canon materials. If you're more interested in a nuanced Drakov then his refusal to adopt gunpowder does not have to equate to battlefield inflexibility. Perhaps he has witnessed one too many torches in powder kegs, or a firing line ruined by rain, to feel safe with this new technology. In all other respects, he's a functionally savvy, intelligent military thinker.
ewancummins wrote:Maybe you should include a 'gunpowder plot' against Drakov in your novel? Something early in his reign, to make him paranoid about 'magic powder used by assassins.'
The story has been stillborn for a while now, but I had considered something similar to this. Instead of an assassination, I was thinking of writing in a bit into his story where his own side sabotages an enemy cannon emplacement. The resulting explosion not only destroys the cannon but also collapses an entire wall of the enemy citadel, giving Drakov an easy victory... and a lifelong distrust of cannon. I've had to write in similar episodes explaining his distrust of demihumans and battlefield prejudice against women, too. These are convictions he holds strongly that deny him many useful advantages, but they're convictions that anybody who's been through what he's been through could understandably come out holding.
It's irrational- but the dude is crazy.
In my campaign (and as the novel is trying to demonstrate) Drakov is actually not so much crazy as war-shocked. Much of his attitude towards rulership derives from his childhood in a warzone, and he genuinely rules as best as he knows how. The tragedy of his situation is that he's a very effective leader in times of crisis, but he has never understood peacetime morality and so from a peaceful civilian viewpoint, he's a bloodthirsty firebrand. The only type of leadership he knows is crisis leadership, and therefore his inclination is toward continuing the crisis so he can be of use to his country. Historically, this draws from many realworld leaders, not least Mao Zedong ("The Revolution must continue at all costs!").
Under this interpretation, Drakov might actually do fairly well with fending off a gunpowder invasion. He's the typical "father to his soldiers" style of leader to military types, and his primary trait in battle has been his flexibility and creative thinking - in my novel he got his start leading an elite but small band of outriders in flanking missions and supply raids. While his depredations as leader may not endear him to the populace, his control over propaganda may allow him to paint the invaders as The Greater Of The Evils. Superstitions about magic will also feed into public antipathy over the use of gunpowder weapons - especially if the invaders destroy a fort or citadel on the way. Drakov has informants, he has a massive (if outdated) army, and he has a very strong home turf advantage in terms of food and supplies. The enemy may have some "flags and flowers" welcome from the liberated Falkovnians, if they're really savvy with their counter propaganda, but they will be fighting a very distant battle. And whatever you say about gunpowder's virtues, one serious drawback exists - you'll never be able to loot any stores of it in Falkovnia. If you're in for the long run, you're going to be bringing it all with you. Make sure your supply lines are secure... if you can. Drakov has some very good riders.
Finally, take my entire post with a big huge "Your mileage may vary" caveat as well. Depending on your campaign style, these historical and "grit-based" issues may not work well with a fantasy gothic flavor. And if you prefer Drakov as a straightforward bogeyman, it certainly is far simpler to make him a military millstone that hampers his lieutenants' attempts to wage war competently. Again, history has an example for us: the British decided against assassinating Adolf Hitler, because his inept micromanagement of the German campaign against Russia was already doing the Allies a huge favor.
