All Things Vargr

[Condottiere]

Vargr: Military Organization

G. What are riches to a Vargr?

H. Which is not the same as what a Vargr values.

I. Individual freedom of movement, seems to be one.

J. Since the implication is that it's individual dissatisfaction with a situation, that causes it.

K. Which means, not so much a great opportunity for divorce lawyers, rather instruments that prevent movement, or creates friction slowing it down.

 

[Condottiere]

Vargr: Military Organization

L. Loot would be one thing that attracts Vargr to a corsair career.

M. Which, taken at face value, means that corsairs don't have the means to participate in a consumer society.

N. Or, their industrial base doesn't supply consumer products.

O. Popular imagination would have corsairs stealing everything that isn't nailed down.

P. Sometimes, even stuff that is nailed down.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Anything that's not nailed down is mine.

If I can pry it loose, it wasn't nailed down.

 

[Condottiere]

There's a really funny not safe for workplace (western) comic short, that sort of addresses this.

The visiting royal guest was cursed with a dog penis, and the running gag was that anything that it urinated on, was hers.

So, property rights might be somewhat nebulous, in the Vargr point of view.

 

[Vargas]

I don't know if this has been covered in the previous 25 pages but this has been on my mind for a little while.

Is it possible that the rate of change of Vargr groups has been overstated? I'm not saying significantly, simply less than people tend to assert. Too much leadership churn impacts organizational stability and we've got interstellar polities lasting years in the setting. Admittedly, leaders may come and go which hold to the same basic policies so effectively there's less churn but I don't think that would hold in something like a pirate band.

Clearly the Vargr are not wolves but how often do wolf pack leaders get challenged? (I honestly don't know).

Just some thoughts.

 

[Condottiere]

Let's take it at face value.

Human society has many purposes, one of which is to spare members from their own worst impulses, those potentially affected, and then mitigate the damage.

That's why I think that Vargr society tries to slow down that nomadism, and challenge to the status quo.

If you become a citizen of a polity, there would be a sunken cost, lost if the Vargr left it.

Also, by formalizing leadership challenges, it doesn't prevent them, but does require publicly demonstrating adequate cause.

 

[Condottiere]

If you think about it, a leadership challenge isn't really necessary, since, in theory, a Vargr could leave a pack at any time, and poach like minded packmates, setting up his own pack.

So, the possibility exists there's some coercive aspect that prevents this, or that, like a corporation, tangible, maybe intangible assets, are somehow tied to the existing pack itself, not to the pack leader.