I find James Maliszewski's "Grognardia" blog (grognardia.blogspot.com), which focuses on old-school gaming, to be a rich source for interesting observations and speculations about the RPG hobby.

In particular, his occasional comments about the concern for 'realism' back in the early days of the hobby (and since) pique my interest as a Harniac. After all, Harn was marketed as a "Real Fantasy World" (and later as a "realistic" fantasy world), and many of us Harn enthusiasts do talk about the 'realism' of the setting. (I just did a search for 'realistic' and 'realism' on this forum and found over 3200 posts that match).

Anyway, in one of this recent posts (a retrospective review of Bonewits 'Authentic Thaumaturgy' which can be found at http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2012/02/ ... aurgy.html), Maliszewski wrote the following:



I don't disagree with this at all-- either in general or when applied to Harn. In fact, I think it's extremely accurate for describing not just the early HM rules, but also many of the recent supplements to come out from CGI, that do lots of very sophisticated 'translations' of things into game mechanical forms (e.g. detailed rules for modeling hunting, rules for the effects of reading tomes and scrolls, rules for determining whether or not one can join a given clerical order, etc.)

However, as Maliszewski observes, this 'mechanical translation' is only "some of what we call 'realism'". So, my question is this-- what else gets included within that rather broad term?

In particular, I'm interested in hearing from my fellow Harniacs as to what you feel to be the other components of 'realism' in regards to the Harnic setting. What, for you, makes Harn 'realistic'?

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-- Jim Chokey

"Argent, chief embattled tenne. A coney of the field and crossed carrots proper"

Well........

I find it useful for my brain to state the bleedin' obvious..that realism is not reality...the old 'this not a pipe' picture of a pipe cheap trick by Magritte if you will.

Once I have hurdled that, I can see that realism is anything that tries to...trick the brain into thinking it is seeing something but also using imagery/words/constructs that are as close to the original as possible. However..there is no original (well at least that I have experienced..I am open to the concept of the Multiverse but have yet to travel to Harn ) that I have seen, so I have to falsely construct a world and then use imagery I think most closely resembles this construct and hope it conveys what this world looks like..oh dear I need to sit down..

However; I can name components for you that I feel adds to the mountain of trickery that presents the false world of Harn to you/us all

*Artwork. The art of harn is mostly 'realistic' in that it tries to accurately represent what the eye might see if there.
*Sounds. In game I use the sound generator thingy. Harn sounds just like Terra apparently. I have yet to use smells. Or feelies.
*Geography. The world makes considerable attempts to follow geographical 'rules'; in basic terms rivers running to the sea from mountains etc. I know for Geography buffs it fails to a certain degree but is enough for me.
*Economics. The world makes considerable attempts to present cultures that throb within the parameters on 'normal' economic rules. Again for many it fails..it is just enough for me.
*Anthropology. The world makes attempts to present cultures that exist together in a believable human (mostly) way. For many it fails..but it pulls out the 'strangely' familiar/Fantasy card here. It fails on some levels for me here. (However within individual cultures it presents people that exist together in a believable way IMHO.)
*Constant Critique. Good old Harnforum IMHO keeps the old grey matter fizzing away and patches up leaks that occur from time to time..like explaining the plethora of castles in the Harnic Warfare thread.

Now; we come to maps/atlas information. These do not in any way represent what the eye might see; but they represent what a God might see/know; and add a sort of comfort to the concept that this world really exists. I think for many maps will be high on the list of 'realism' factors..even though they technically are a surreallistic pathway to the fidelity of Harn. No matter really; Dali et al felt they were representing truth....and who am I to argue.

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Plots and schemes are the same thing..

Probably the biggest component of game realism is verisimilitude - things feel real. With Hârn, this becomes very broad - these forums are full of people discussing topics that appear, to the uninitiated, to be ridiculously unrelated to any kind of fantasy gaming! Agriculture, pastures, milling, and so on. But it's all about the desire to create a game world that feels real. Hârn is miles ahead of the pack to start with, and if you compare it to, say, a D&D world like Forgotten Realms, where no writer seems to have had the faintest notion how economies and agriculture work or why they are critically important, and where a city of 500,000+ people sits on a wild frontier surrounded by wilderness and scattered farms (and the local nobility appear to own nothing except businesses)... it's like comparing a Gustave Courbet to a child's crayon sketch. (You can still love that sketch, too, though.)

When you manage to put together a coherent, realistic setting where you've actually understood the relationship and importance of the components (from the economy to the culture to the individual people), it's easy for players to immerse themselves in it. Even small differences are a big deal. Token nods towards the way the medieval world really worked always seem to make my players pay more attention and become more involved in the setting.

LOL

I think what can kill a games suspension of disbelief - you have one that talks about "the most realistic combat system", and then it's based in a world with a city like the one Thomas mentions.

Not that Harn is perfect with it economics and realism - but there is at least a realisitc attempt as a basis, for some who like to examine the details more thoroughly a good base to begin upon

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I think Thomas has hit the nail on the head - it's all about verisimilitude. My enjoyment of a game is much greater if I can maintain my suspension of disbelief, and that suspension of disbelief breaks down when the verisimilitude of the world breaks down.

To some extent, all systems will have these breakdowns. World building is hard work, and getting everything to gel (especially if you are including elements of high fantasy) can be very difficult. Small details can have vast unintended consequences if care isn't taken to consider their ramifications. If everyone and their brother knows a mage who can fly, toss fireballs, and transmute stone to mud, why would anyone ever build a castle? Why are monsters with no discernable economic model hoarding gold coins? How do you feed an entire nation of vampires? And for gods' sakes, why can velociraptors cast fireball spells (I'm looking at you, Rifts: Dinosaur Swamp)?

I will say that you can gloss over some of these issues based on the kind of game you play. If you are doing the generic dungeon-crawl thing, the ability to sense the "alignment" of others might not bother you. But if you're trying to run games that involve whodunnits or political intrigue, this stuff is going to mess you up.

Personally, I like games that start with a basis in reality and extrapolate from there. I find it makes it easier for players to a) understand what's going on (because they have a point of reference) and b) have some gut sense of the likelihood of success of whatever scheme they're hatching. If the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, if there are 4 seasons, if crops are planted in the spring and harvested in the fall, if snow is cold and bugs are annoying and swamps are fetid places of disease and snakes and moist misery, I don't have to explain things to my players. They just know them. And when I say, "as the summer sun is setting, the trail of the fugutive you've been tracking leads out of the woods and into the swamp," they all have a pretty good idea that heading into the swamp in the dark is maybe not such a good plan. They can weigh the risks and act accordingly.

Similarly, when I say, "this guy is a knight," they have some idea of what that means, and all the social and cultural trappings that go with it. And if the world has verisimilitude, it's much easier for me to give my NPCs believable motivations. Villains go from being 2-dimensional caricatures representing simply two axes of moral stance to living, breathing characters with goals, quirks, aspirations, and foibles that can be discovered and ruthlessly exploited by my players as they pursue their own aims. I can't really say that I know someone who is "chaotic evil" or "neutral good," but I know people who are greedy, vain, altruistic, lazy, obsessive, vindictive, forgiving, brave, pleasant, or passive-aggressive. And my players do too, so their point of reference is easy, which makes it that much easier to maintain their suspension of disbelief and enjoyment of the game.

And by the way, verisimilitude applies to both the setting and the rules. You can have the most realistic, internally consistent game setting ever, but if the rules mechanics you're using to resolve conflicts of various types are irrevocably broken, you will annoy your players because their own internal expectations of how a situation might play out will be wildly different than that dictated by the game mechanics. Similarly, if you have an elegant, consistent rules mechanic that models a variety of different activities very well but your world is a cobbled-together patchwork of unmatched elements that don't mesh well, you will become annoyed as your players use game logic to question how everything in the world works (and be dissatisfied by the lack of coherent answers).

"Because it's magic" is pretty much never a valid explanation.

Our last Harnmaster campaign started in Harn and ended up mostly in Forgotten Realms where the characters ended up working to establish and expand the "Church of Chaos".

In the history of the Forgotten Realms "Helm" god of law had recently killed off the most good and important god because he was enforcing his rigid moral code. Although the god of magic was eventually restored Helm and his church were being looked on very negatively as a result.

The campaign motiff stressed the comparison of law vs chaos (and to a lesser extent good vs evil) where "Law" - where seemingly considered widely desirable - when taken too far is rigid rules untempered by kindness or overaching goals. While "Chaos" is the philosophy of individuality, freedom and personal moral codes. Lawful churches and groups, all of good alignment and seemingly should be allied, could battle one another over their rigid rules of law.

As far as a detect alignment spell "Law" and "Chaos" were extreme concepts of society vs individual as easily and clearly different as torture vs healing relating to good vs evil.

Many of the concepts stood out very clearly for the characters as they were both mages - but one was elven trained while the other was Shek-P'var with rigid rules and strong enforcement. As a part of the Shek-P'var the rules seemed important but to the elven trained mage, viewing the rules from outside, the rules seemed cruel and domineering.

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Member of the CoE (Council of Elitists)

I don't want 'realism' in my fantasy. Verisimilitude, yes. Realism, no. If I wanted realism I'd walk out my front door. Or I'd hop a flight and drop in on the Regia Anglorum folks in England. When I game I want drama and excitement! I want beautiful women, strange beasts, weird occult happenings, and action hero daring-do. Indeed, fantasy relies on having at least one or more premises (magic, monsters, etc) that break with realism. Instead, I want the world to feel just real and consistent enough that I can suspend my disbelief and get into the tale. That's not realism. Its verisimilitude.

Well, this is a bit of a semantic/perception issue here.

As verisimilitude is the "appearance" of reality, what one views as an appearance of reality may not be what another views as an appearance of reality.



I think what I like in a setting is for it to be logical.

The groundwork for this is that unless otherwise specified, the physical laws correlate to a set of known laws, usually defaulting to terran.

Of course, there are different laws, such as magic, that interact with these set physical laws.

As for monsters, what IS a monster? Many terran beasts from different times could be considered "monsters", such a dire wolves, saber tooth tigers, a raptor, a Tyrranosaurus.

There are some monsters that use some of the "magical laws" in the game that explain their ability to exist as well. And the comination of physical laws and magical laws apply to them as well.

In this sense of the word, to figure out how many acres are needed to support X population is part of explaining how the enviroment and the laws relate to each other.



Applause

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Maybe they don't like to eat their meat raw

...Hchrramm...
Sorry!
Well...

Realism. What does it mean to me, anyway? There's 'real' and 'realistic'. The latter to me meaning 'appearing to be real' or 'being predictable within the boundaries of some kind of common sense' or simply 'making sense'.
In that sense, realism is based on an agreement: that the world will work according to such and such 'laws' that can be relied on. Like in 'IF A THEN B', e.g. If that guy opens a guilded business in Tashal without the consent of the Mangai, he will be in serious trouble even before he welcomes his first customer or some such thing.
These 'laws' don't need to come from our own sphere of experience, they just need to be stated somewhere, they need to be known and they need to have a certain reliability to work as expected. I say 'a certain reliability' because sometimes the fun begins when for some reason these laws don't seem to work.
And as D-Man demanded: "In game I want drama and excitement! I want beautiful women, strange beasts, weird occult happenings, and action hero daring-do. " But to get the fun out of it or to get immersed into it, what you need is a 'realistic feel'. We all know that it's not real, but without the reliability of certain 'laws' or 'agreements', everything comes apart.
In Fantasy, everything is possible, but if truly everything is possible in one story or setting I am afraid people will not follow the narrator. Such stuff is annoying and tiring at least to me.
So, I have no problem suspending my disbelief for Dragons or mages or gargun and such stuff, as long as there is some reliability in the way they behave in the setting.
Also, I don't care much if the the land cannot feed a given population in a setting as long as it is not thrown into my face (which is almost exclusively the case in this forum here ).

In a completely different discussion with my best man, the question was raised: 'Is Pippi Longstocking real?'
The answer we agreed on was: 'Of course!'
We can talk about Pippi Longstocking and we all know facts about her: She can lift a horse, because she is the strongest girl in the world. She is even stronger than her father who is the king of Kurrekurredutt. And so on.
OTOH we all certainly know that she is an invention, but she comes to life in our minds. She becomes real to us.

Just a few random thoughts, as mostly.

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"The purpose of the game is to entertain the players and the GM. The rest is just semantics."
-by Munin from the forum-

I think on the basics of this issue, we agree. The only perhaps difference is I would prefer them to not only by "stated" as you mention, but have some logic to them, and this logic also includes their effects on the rest of the world as well.

For example - Shek Pvar beliefs and enforcement of renegades makes sense to me. A hiar strict in some areas, but makes sense overall.

Otherwise, there is nothing to prevent mages from outwardly effecting the rise and fall of kingdoms in a direct overt way, and if you have that you have mage-kings, mages being common in battles as "artillery", and other things that do not lend themselves well to the restained influence of magic on Harn.



I agree here, they just have to follow the physical laws of that universe. Dragons are a bitharder to explain, as it seems they must be "magical beings", mostly because of the flight and fire breathing.

There was a television program (history channel? Sci-fi?) where it explained the history of dragons as if it were a documentary, explaining in physical laws how they were able to fly, breathe fire, etc.

They were from the age of dinosaurs, but survived in small numbers until the middle ages. Something about them producing hydrogen from their diet, and this hdrogen made it possible for them to fly and breathe fire, but not both until the hydrogen was replentished. I forgot how they produced hydrogen, but somehting along the lines of eating certain things - might have been sulphur, though I am not sure (it's been a while since I have seen it, and a while since any chemistry classes ).

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Injuries. Not Hit Points.

Skill MLs. Not Character Levels.

Occupations. Not Character Classes.

Thus, I defend all iterations of HarnMaster as being, essentially, on a better track to manifesting properly HarnWorld better than many (most?) other systems*. This is why I also don't advocate a "systemless" direction for HarnWorld's future. Whether it's HM4 or HMGold2 or Fanon houserules, I encourage the development and improvement of HarnMaster as much as I do HarnWorld.

*Chaosium's BRP come closest to being as good a fit for HarnWorld as HarnMaster.

Realism stems from consistency, understandable laws, good myths and stories, and not just facts, but the why behind those facts. Harn is often full of facts, but often not the stories behind those facts that bring them into context.

For instance, The Pvaric Code since someone mentioned in an earlier reply. It sits nice and pretty on the page, but my group understood it a bit more when I gave my pHarn context that the Code was a compromise between the Laranian Church and the Pvarrans.

In Short: Following the long and bloody struggle against Lothrim Foulspawner some 600 years ago, the Laranian Church was fully aware of the dangers of such power as the Shek-Pvar held that, as they saw it, was not under any moral restrictions of a Deity. It was, as Lothrim tried to be, man trying to become a Demi-God. Power for power's sake, as the Church saw it.
The Laranians were preparing a holy crusade and inquisition against the Pvarrans to prevent another Lothrim for ever happening. However, negotiations prospered between the heads of the six orders and the Laranian primate in Kanday, and the Pvaric Code and Order of the Gentle White Hand were formed and the Crusade was averted. The order of the Gentle White Hand (a.k.a. in my group as the "Probing White Fingers" and other less polite names that give image to the white hand shoved up someone's nether orifice to control them like a puppet) enforces the Codex and make sure that all Pvarrans enforce the codex.

Interesting, iemckinnon.

It's never been delved into by canon if the White Hand was around when Lothrim was - If they were, than perhaps he was too strong even for them.

I'd like to put the founding of the White Hand though in even the more distant past perhaps - otherwise there could have been many Lothrim types.

The typical fantasy kingdom where many mages run around and are the "generals" of armies, or even lower ranking could very well happen without the Shek Pvar code. Think similar to the pre-empire Jedi, though without a Jedi code.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Turin, who says there weren't more high powered mages once up on a time? Remember that Melderyn had the Eldrich Period between 650 and 200 BT and even after mages may have been working behind the scenes during Erebir's reign. There are hints in the book that Lothrim may have been of Melderyn. In my pHarn, mages after the Eldrych period became too disorganized. Each seeking to amass his own power and guard it from his rivals. Think of a mage version of the clans of Scotland. So there was no organized opposition to Lothrim because it might open those who expended energy in that arena to attacks from their peers. Training was more of a form of a master with one or two apprentices, and mages fighting on both sides of a battle generally tended to cancel each other out.

See, I have a completely different take on this. To me, the Eldrych Period didn't mean a time of warring mages, it was simply a period where the influence of those who might have been studying and developing Pvarism was thought (by some later generation) to be greater than other times. Or, to condense that a bit, a later generation heard that mages were in charge, which is a gross simplification and exaggeration, of course.

My thoughts are that this was a time of intellectual ferment and those studying pvarism were more visible, discussing escoteric topics, writing, visiting, and so on. In order to have this time, they will need to be supported. You don;t think deep thoughts if the majority of your day is spent labouring to feed, clothe, and shelter yourself. So it's likely these students held some kind of special status in their communities, where they were supported by ordinary people. They may even have been land-owners themsleves, but once again, they wouldn't have done much about managing that land. There's that pesky need to spend time in deep thoughts that precludes most other activities.

To me, the reasons that shek pvar aren't running around throwing fireballs at one another are manifold. But the two primary reasons are:
(a) a shek pvar's goal is enlightenment, and an activity that doesn't work towards that goal is unimportant, and
(b) throwing spells around is hard work, and bloody dangerous!

The occasional shek pvar that looks up from their study, like Lothrim or Gwaedra, may see some things they feels strongly about, and set aside their studies for a period to set things straight...and get carried away. But on the whole, the activity that shek pvar practitioners undertake precludes involvement in mundane affairs, at least for the most part.

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This rationale may work for SOME of the Shek Pvar. Though it makes me think of current professional musicians.

The reason that current musicians don't try to put out top 40 music is that they are concerned with the art of music, and they are not in it for the money, fame, etc. etc.

I don't think this idea totaly flies, though being a Shek-Pvar is different than being a musician, one would think they would focus on the craft more.

But I still think many would give in to the temporal temptations of the mundane world, and the White Hand is there to make sure they do not.

Though this does not preclude either a revolt, a new outlook, a new group "in power" in the Shek Pvar world, or even a splintering of the Shek Pvar, resulting in a time where the honored traditions of not interfering with the world of the Kvikir is thrown out the window.



There is never just ONE sith lord - there will always be two

But really, to me the ability of a mage to influence a war goes far beyond casting fireballs. Some of the ways they could greatly effect the results of a battle would be far less showy, but a lot more effective.

Things like using magic to kill a leader prior to a battle would be one, obscuring or hiding a group of men that attack the other army in the rear/flank (Savoryan or Fyvrian would seem to be effective in this regards) would be another.

Poisoning or even drying up any sources for another army on the march is another, and just the many communicative abilities of the Shek Pvar would be of great help on the battlefield and/or prior to any battle taking place.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

iemkinnon - the expalnation you have with a compromise between Laranians an Pvarans makes since for the areas Laranians are empowered - but does it explain why the same rules might Exist in Shoju or other far off places?

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I’m was really glad this thread had been revived, as I realized that never actually posted my own $.02 on the subject (i.e. What does Harnic realism consist beyond having things ‘translated properly into game mechanics’?)− and I did have some thoughts to share.

However, I see that since the revival, it's already drifting/hijacked towards a different topic. I guess that'll teach me to delay...

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-- Jim Chokey

"Argent, chief embattled tenne. A coney of the field and crossed carrots proper"

Easy answer - hijack it back. Go ahead and post your two cents. I for one would be interested to hear your take on the (original) topic.

OK, then.... my thoughts on “What makes Harn realistic (besides Harnmaster game mechanics)?”

I find myself simultaneously nodding and scratching my head at the many responses of “verisimilitude”. I am nodding because the specific things that have been said about it make sense to me− and yes, the world being “true-seeming” does seem to me to be part of Harn’s realism.

At the same time, I’m scratching my head in puzzlement, because part of me wonders if saying “verisimilitude” doesn’t obscure just as much as it clarifies. Maybe it's just me, but it seems rather abstract term, that could (like the word ‘realistic’) potentially be used to encompass a wide range of things, depending on interpretation/definition.

Given that, I find myself more drawn to the approach given by Peter the Skald− by listing specific features of Harn’s realism as a setting, rather than seeking a general umbrella term into which to fit them. (Yeah, I’m a ‘seeing the trees’ rather than ‘seeing the forest’ guy.)

In addition to the items identified by Peter in his list, I do think that some of the specific examples mentioned by folks who addressed verisimilitude are worth singling out again:

-- Characters are represented as having complex/mixed motivations. They're not there just to serve as 'the evil guy' or as 'the antagonist'.
-- The physical and social world generally corresponds to our own (modern) understanding of the world− in so far as it structured according to rules/principles (geography, astronomy, economics) that make sense (at least as we moderns understand them)
--Fantastic/different aspects of the setting still have their own internal logic which makes sense− or at least can be made to make to make sense− within the logic of the world.

Three additional points that I think also contribute to Harn’s realism.

--Very high levels of detail, including ‘extraneous’ detail. So much of what’s published on Harn− and is often described in actual play (at least in my experience) exists not to enable/embellish plot or conflict, or even to establish the ‘baseline setting’ for folks who are new to Harn, but to provide a tapestry of details and descriptions that is more than one could ever possibly need. This serves to establish the illusion of a world that exists in itself, rather than simply being a background prop for adventures.

--A concern with the everyday. I understand where D-Man is coming from in saying that he wants a game to have drama, strange/weird events, and feats of derring-do, but I think that a very large part of the Harn setting− and part of what makes Harn a realistic setting− is its concern with the ordinary, quotidian life of the people of the world. It may be that we don’t actually make farming, working, hunting, fishing, family matters, the subject of actual play− but I think concern with level of attenetion given towards the everyday is a distinctive feature of the setting and one that contributes to its realism.

-- Low-level mimesis. By that, I’m thinking of an idea articulated by literary critic Northrop Frye, that stories can be classified based on the relationship between the protagonist and the world in which they exist. To grossly simplify his idea: “High-mimesis” stories might be myths or super-hero tales where the protagonists are gods or otherwise superior to the world and those in it, or they might be tales in which the protagonists are kings, rulers, heroic warriors, who are superior to other men (socially, physically, or intellectually) in degree-- but are not necessarily qualitatively different from them in kind-- or superior to the world itself (think epic poetry, medieval romance, and even things like tragedy). Then there’s low-level mimesis− where the characters are basically ordinary/average individuals relative to the world, or who are even inferior, on the whole to others around them. Harn is a setting that encourages play to take place on a fairly low level of mimesis− and I think this is a feature of its realism as well.

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-- Jim Chokey

"Argent, chief embattled tenne. A coney of the field and crossed carrots proper"

I think many of my concerns over the logistics of feeding a population snd things like not only how much is paid not only soldiers but even how the economy works is part of this equation.

The "realism" I like to see are things like how many men could a kingdom truly muster? And at what cost to that country economically? Mustering a large persentage of your population to fight in a campaign that has a lot of casualties is a prelude to very hard economic times.

If your "barbarians" are hunter gatherers, how many men can they muster without dire consequences?

How many horses are taken on campaign? If the cavalry only has one horse per rider, how do they handle the attrtion of horses that ineveitably takes place? And where do all these horses some from?

How many men can a kingdom afford to have in the field and for how long without going bankrupt and/or have men with pay months is arrear?

These questions are reason why I like the game and setting to at least be "realistic-ish"

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Well I don't want to hijack this topic so I am going to make a new one... so for Turin and Leitchy's questions, I am going to make a new thread called Pvarism and you. Find your answers there.

And to my way of thinking, if there's a mage involved in a battle, the most value he'd have is to provide cogent and timely ... and above all, educated ... advice to the war leader. He might well have research the tactics and strategies of past wars, he can make reasoned assessments of risks and basically be the brains of a battle.

Forget about mystical abilities, it's the trained mind which might well be the most valuable thing a master shek pvar can bring to a battle.

If he is at all inclined to participate, that is. I still think 99.9% of shek pvar are too selfish to bother with anything that doesn't lead them towards their goal of enlightenment. Which of course equals access to unlimited knowledge and eternal life...what scholar WOULDN'T want that for themselves!!

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Well, the life extending spells I have seen generally seem to be....for lack of a better word..."evil", for example requiring the blood of an elf.


Better than this - he can see exactly where and how many troops the opposition has. Maybe he can even find their plan of strategy. With a few good uses of mask of Shinjur, he can really make things confusing for the army that is trying to muster.

Just for an example, lets say the an Earl commads a very loyal body of troops that is his part of the muster. A few good uses of the mask of Shinjur could make it seem that this Earl is a traitor to the King. The King can execute the Earl, with bad results for the army, or not, and the results would still be bad. Disunity at best.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....