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Talon Greyfeather said:
I though the Alien Module 2 for MgT 1e on the Vargr was pretty good. There was quite a bit of information on society and culture and how charisma played into it. It's been a good resource. Speaking of corsairs - from page 40:

Although the life of a corsair is appealing to the Vargr mentality,
these space pirates only constitute less than 10% of Vargr
society. Unfortunately all Vargr have been tarred with the same
brush even though the corsairs are hated and feared by many
Vargr that have chosen a more honest way of life.

They are an interesting race, imho
Click to expand...
10% is still a huge number. Think about it. 700 Billion Vargr in Gvurrdon Sector. That means that there are 70 BILLION Corsairs in that one sector alone. Figure average of 35 Corsairs per ship? That is 2 BILLION Corsair ships in this one Sector. That is insane! lol Even if it was only 1% that is still 200 MILLION Corsairs ships in one sector. Still insane.

That one sector could just roll over most of the Imperium. I doubt the Imperium has even 1 million ships across it's 11,000 systems, that is 10 ships per system versus the Vargr of just one sector being able to put 20,000 ships in each of the 3I 11,000 worlds. Something about that doesn't seem right to Me. Maybe the author didn't do the math?
 
Yes, 10% is way too high. For those of you in the US, consider how many police there are here, constituting a "visible police presence" which all too many consider to be way too many (until they are robbed, of course). How many police does that add up to?

It would surprise most of the complainers that the police presence over here is only about one officer per 400 people, nationwide. In a lot of those jurisdictions where the complaints of "too many police" happen, it can total as little as a third of that figure. (Less than one officer per 1,000 citizens!) And that's for a visible police presence. For a career which, by its nature, benefits strongly from being invisible, (such as any sort of career criminal), you can probably figure on anywhere from a tenth to a hundredth of that figure before they start becoming "too visible" to be viable. (Remember, visible criminal are well known to the authorities as well as to the general public - who do you think is going to be tracked down and spaced when the authorities "need to be seen to be doing something"?)

A much more reasonable figure for the corsair proportion, in my opinion, would be about 1 in 100,000... which is still insanely high, if that's just permanent career corsairs. It's a lot more believable if you consider it to also include those who are opportunistic pirates - "jumpcussers".
 
While I agree that 10% seems pretty crazy, I am going to assume that is more like a "How many norsemen go aviking?" question. Some small number do it regularly, a larger number went off once and settled down, and many, many others never went at all.

And probably a lot of those 10% corsairs were a bunch of dumb kids on a half assed merchant that never actually ended up raiding anything, just running around impressing themselves.
 
On the other hand, these grossly inflated numbers are kind of par for the course with some of these articles on aliens. The redonkulously large number of Ihatei is the same sort of thing. There's no way Aslan society is spewing out that many landless younger sons, given the fact that 75% of Aslan are female and clans need males for their military and local expansion.

You just have to adjust things to suit your own sensibilities.
 
Galadrion said:
Yes, 10% is way too high. For those of you in the US, consider how many police there are here, constituting a "visible police presence" which all too many consider to be way too many (until they are robbed, of course). How many police does that add up to?

It would surprise most of the complainers that the police presence over here is only about one officer per 400 people, nationwide. In a lot of those jurisdictions where the complaints of "too many police" happen, it can total as little as a third of that figure. (Less than one officer per 1,000 citizens!) And that's for a visible police presence. For a career which, by its nature, benefits strongly from being invisible, (such as any sort of career criminal), you can probably figure on anywhere from a tenth to a hundredth of that figure before they start becoming "too visible" to be viable. (Remember, visible criminal are well known to the authorities as well as to the general public - who do you think is going to be tracked down and spaced when the authorities "need to be seen to be doing something"?)

A much more reasonable figure for the corsair proportion, in my opinion, would be about 1 in 100,000... which is still insanely high, if that's just permanent career corsairs. It's a lot more believable if you consider it to also include those who are opportunistic pirates - "jumpcussers".
Click to expand...
From everything I have read, most Vargr governments both support and defend against Corsairs, even hiring them as mercenaries. So, it is unlikely that being a high CHA Corsair in Vargr Space would get you much law enforcement trouble. Have you seen how many corsair bases are in Gvurrdon Sector, each one the equivalent of a Naval Base? Ouch!

I would say that it wouldn't include jumpcussers because it specifically states life of a Corsair. That says fulltime to Me. Now, arguing the other side of this... North Korea 29.9% of its population is active-duty military. That is way higher than the percentage of Vargr Cosairs and it is a current reality and not a hypothetical space wolf pirate percentage. lol So, maybe it is not an over-inflated number.
 
Hey ... it's a resource. It also states that the corsair's are the reason Vargr are tarred with the same brush. Take what you like, discard the rest ... it's what makes being a referee fun.

Considering how fast things change with the Vargr, what's there on the first visit to the planet may not be there on the second!
 
Vormaerin said:
On the other hand, these grossly inflated numbers are kind of par for the course with some of these articles on aliens. The redonkulously large number of Ihatei is the same sort of thing. There's no way Aslan society is spewing out that many landless younger sons, given the fact that 75% of Aslan are female and clans need males for their military and local expansion.

You just have to adjust things to suit your own sensibilities.
Click to expand...
7 Trillion Aslan in the Hierate. Average generation of 20 years. Average number of children her household: 5. Average number of males per household: 1.25. So that is 1 Ihatei per 4 households. That is 875 BILLION Ihatei every 20 years. Almost 44 BILLION every year. So, the number of Ihatei in the books makes sense.
 
That would be ten percent of Vargr are corsairs, or ten percent of Vargr are corsairs, at any given time.

If we use the Viking analogy, and it seems surprisingly apt, each ruler has a bodyguard, that he compensates very well. Housecarl being taken, we'll probably have to do some research to find a Scandinavian synonym.

Varangian would be a semi permanent, well paid, mercenary, and as far as I know, pretty loyal.

Loyalty would be to the institution, and if the institution is successful, charisma of it's officers, or financiers, is not quite that relevant.

Though it helps.

Maintaining the institution, is another matter.

And that's where short term capitalism comes in, that quickly mutates to late stage capitalism.
 
Condottiere said:
That would be ten percent of Vargr are corsairs, or ten percent of Vargr are corsairs, at any given time.

If we use the Viking analogy, and it seems surprisingly apt, each ruler has a bodyguard, that he compensates very well. Housecarl being taken, we'll probably have to do some research to find a Scandinavian synonym.

Varangian would be a semi permanent, well paid, mercenary, and as far as I know, pretty loyal.

Loyalty would be to the institution, and if the institution is successful, charisma of it's officers, or financiers, is not quite that relevant.
Click to expand...
Vargr have no loyalty to institutions, since institutions cannot have CHA. Although, reading more material on the Vargr, they seem to have no loyalty at all. Some might give you a second chance, but most just follow whomever has the highest CHA at the moment and abandon you as soon as you fail.
Condottiere said:
Though it helps.

Maintaining the institution, is another matter.

And that's where short term capitalism comes in, that quickly mutates to late stage capitalism.
Click to expand...
 
I just got my "Fifth Frontier War" and it is sad....
I am starting my work to integrate data from MgT: 5FW and my data from previous editions(GDW, etc..)

The biggest issue I've run into is being stopped dead just inside the cover.
They have this "Would be wonderful" graphic of the theater EXCEPT....the top graphic is on the bottom page and the bottom on the top

I had to crack the password so I could edit the PDF and fix that....

Next, that set of graphics has dates....which are "supposed to" coordinate with things like the in-book timeline of the war, and other sections of the book's text....and don't

In one case, an Imperial detachment "From" Denotam engaged a Zhodani fleet in the Mirriam (Vilis) System.
The fighting had lasted several days.
The Zhodani were preparing to retire back to the Frenzie, captured week's earlier

That was how it was "written"

Whoever was doing the art work for the theater of war graphic interpreted the above as:
The Zhodani were leaving Mirriam
AT THE SAME TIME, Zhodani forces from Rapp's World arrived to conduct probing attacks against Denotam and Mirriam (which would
have required Jump 6 Assault warships!)

Another ridiculous error on the part of the writing AND Art teams were that they had the following events:
Zhodani fleet Jumps in to invade the Regina system
The Duke's Own arrest the assigned Admiral of the 193rd Fleet
That Admiral then orders the 193rd to break out and jump for the "Roup" system, where they engage disorganized Zhodani forces withdrawn
from the Regina system

The writers then describe the success of smashing part of the Zhodani supply line before conducting a sweep of the Demilitarized Zone..

Well, excuse me, but the "Roup" system is J-3 from Regina and J-4 from Ruie, which would have been:
1) the logical place for fatigued and damaged ships to retire to from Regina(only J-1 away)
2) the proper jumping off point for any sweep of the DMZ.

That tells me BOTH teams were not paying attention
It also tells me none of the proofreaders or editors were doing their job!

Next, I realized there had to be a time line of the war in the book, and I found it on page 169
When I then started comparing dates between the graphic and that time line, I have "so far" found SIX points where the graphic team had screwed the pooch and put the wrong dates into their graphics.

And, that again tells me none of the proofreaders or editors were doing their job!

So, Dear Mongoose......Way to SCREW THE POOCH!!!
I've not gotten through the second page of your Frontier War Timeline (pg 69) and the images just inside the cover of this book and I've already found TEN bugs
 
Also, there is a Gvurrdon Sourcebook (Mongoose 1sr Ed.), but it's only available on eBook now, which means that I own it, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.
www.mongoosepublishing.com

Gvurrdon Sector eBook

This pack describes the entire Gvurrdon sector, including history, worlds and maps, ready for exploration!
www.mongoosepublishing.com www.mongoosepublishing.com
 
MasterGwydion said:
10% is still a huge number. Think about it. 700 Billion Vargr in Gvurrdon Sector. That means that there are 70 BILLION Corsairs in that one sector alone. Figure average of 35 Corsairs per ship? That is 2 BILLION Corsair ships in this one Sector. That is insane! lol Even if it was only 1% that is still 200 MILLION Corsairs ships in one sector. Still insane.

That one sector could just roll over most of the Imperium. I doubt the Imperium has even 1 million ships across it's 11,000 systems, that is 10 ships per system versus the Vargr of just one sector being able to put 20,000 ships in each of the 3I 11,000 worlds. Something about that doesn't seem right to Me. Maybe the author didn't do the math?
Click to expand...
Well, technically it said "less than 10%". Could be anywhere between 0.000000000143% and 10%.
;)

That said, a, few factors which could contribute to corsairs being a non-negligible part (if not perhaps ~10%) of Vargr society:
- Most members of corsair organizations are not out raiding on ships at any given time. Most are back at their bases, spending their plunder. Add to that their dependents who never go out raiding.
- Most Vargr are only corsairs for a brief period of their lives.
- Vargr corsair organizations do use larger ships (with larger crews) than the standard type corsair.
 
Last edited:
Tobias said:
Well, technically it said "less than 10%". Could be anywhere between 0.000000000143% and 10%.
;)

That said, a, few factors which could contribute to corsairs being a non-negligible part (if not perhaps ~10%) of Vargr society:
- Most members of corsair organizations are not out raiding on ships at any given time. Most are back at their bases, spending their plunder. Add to that their dependents who never go out raiding.
- Most Vargr are only corsairs for a brief period of their lives.
- Vargr corsair organizations do use larger ships (with larger crews) than the standard type corsair.
Click to expand...
Looking in some of the available source material, it would seem that 95%+ of Corsair ships are 5,000-tons and below. with 80% or so of them sub 1,000 tons. I figured a crew of 35 because 35 is easy to divide from 70 Billion Vargr living the Cosair lifestyle in just one Sector. So, yes, the actual numbers would be different, but not that different.

On a side note, if an author means 0.001% and yet writes in the book "less than 10%" I will not be buying any more books written by that author. I demand a certain level of accuracy in My sourcebooks. If they don't have it, I don't want them. I cannot worldbuild if authors keep giving inaccurate or purposely vague information. In this case, I blame the editorial team. Did no one actually ask, "Are you trying to say that there are 70 Billion full-time corsairs in one Vargr Sector?" If no one asked this before publishing, then that is a significant failure in quality control. If the author doesn't want to say how many there are, then just say nothing. Do not give bogus info.
 
Anstett said:
Found this when researching Reputation for Mercenaries and comparing to Bounty Hunters. Thought it might help the Vargr conversation.

View attachment 2158

From Mercenaries of Charted Space Chapter 3
Click to expand...
That seems to just be for mercenary companies though, not Vargr in general. Abandoning your Commander after a failure and joining a different mercenary company may not be considered "disloyal" by the Vargr. It says that what is considered "disloyal" is different for Vargr than for others, but it doesn't say what the differences are. :(

Still like the extra info though. Thanks!
 
It's quite possible, that the Vargr raid each other far more frequently than they raid the Imperium.

Being closer and all.

Going by the Pirate Code, the disgruntled Vargr pack will probably take a vote.
 
Condottiere said:
It's quite possible, that the Vargr raid each other far more frequently than they raid the Imperium.

Being closer and all.

Going by the Pirate Code, the disgruntled Vargr pack will probably take a vote.
Click to expand...
If Vargr even use the historical Terran Pirate Code of the European continent. lol. Kind of arrogant of Us humans to think so. lol

Although, I would agree that Vargr raid Vargr far more than Vargr raid into the 3I or Zhodani Space.
 
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