2)Black Company Badge Brother Grub has proposed to get us real, actual, non-fake, Company badges: the Soulcatcher deathshead design. We'd have to come up with a design we all liked. The price on these wouldn't be cheap. Not too expensive, but around $25 at least. Mail Grub to get your name on the list. Two reasons to get on the list ASAP: a)the more people we have on the list, the less $ it is for each of us to get the pin. b)the sooner we get enough for a reasonable priced pin, the sooner we get the aforesaid pin.
3)The ranking structure. This is a biggie. I'll expalin why Bulldog and I set it up the way we did.
First of all, "It appears that regardless of their equivalent rank in the "real world", the leader of the Company is always "The Captain". (Katarr 9/25/99) That means we won't have any generals, marshalls, grand admirals, sky marshalls, or any other weird rank as the head of the Company. Or, even if we do, they will still defer to "The Captain."1
But what about other ranks? Some of you would like to see a real classified heirarchy. Some want to kep it as simple as possible. Well, I'm in the latter category and since you all voted against me and made me Captain, we're doing it that way. What was it Croaker (the former Annalist, not our doc) said? Something like, "Oh, bother, sometimes you just gotta say, 'Because I'm boss, and I said so.'" So here goes:
The Company is led by The Captain (duh). He/she is seconded by The Lieutenant (hereafter referred to as the Lt). Now after him, things get kind of fuzzy. This depends mostly upon the number of people we have in the Company and what positions we find we are in need of. Maybe someday we'll need a Recruitment Officer. Maybe we'll find we need an Officer in Charge of Nothing Really Important. But until that point what we got are: Head Wizard, Chief Surgeon, and Annalist filling in the 2nd Lt. positions. Kind of. The Grand Wizard is really its own rank. Too important to send out to the lines, but too independent (read: undependable; witness One-Eye and Goblin). Eldon seems to be the weird exception to the rule. After the lts. you come onto the Sergeants. They are led by the Staff Sergeant (the highest non-com) and followed right behind by the rest of the Sergeants. These are people in charge of things like the Engineering Corps and the Statndard. Positions of some importance but not requiring a whole lot of brain-power. :) Following the Sergeants we have the Corporals, mostly in charge of their own Squads.
Then we have specialists. Technically they don't have a rank. For instance, the engineering corps. They're really rank, but they aren't ranked. Likewise the rest of the Spookpushers. Except even more rank.
After them is the regular mudfoot. The knuckledraggers. Whatever insulting term you can think of to call them.
Confused yet?
This organization is probably good for the time being. As we gain more members, we will probably change structure. For example, the following could happen:
a)Squads increase in size. A second in the Squad is needed. The Squad is still led by a Corporal, seconded by a Private or whatever.
b)We get a hell of a lot of people and lots of Squads, so we need to organize them into something more manageable: Platoons. So a Sergent is in charge of a 'toon. Which means the Sergeants we have now will need to be promoted to something else. Maybe Staff Sergeant. Which means we need to promote the Staff Sergeant to something else, say Sergeant Major.
4)The Admission Test There are good and bad reasons for having a test. Take it away Lt.:"My original reason for creating the test was simply a way of solidifying us from being a group of strangers spread throughout the world to a close knit unit like the BC. (a similar routine is also conducted with the military to act as a binding agent when people first meet, yes?) The BC in the book have no preconceptions or prejudices and the innate ability to accept and work with complete and utter strangers. This, for the Phych. Majors, is a primary ethos and should be one which is recognised by all of us. I believe this test should be part of our group to ensure everyone has this same basic ethos." (Bulldog 10/1/99)
On the other side of the coin is Cpl. Rustle: "I'm not thrilled with an "admissions" test. I have had enough tests in my life and I don't want to subject anyone to anything I didn't do to join this group. Maybe as a trivia game for the hell of it, but not for initiation. Haven't we all read the books and aren't we already Glen Cook/Black Company fans? Isn't this a group of people that loved those books? That is enough for me." (Rustle 9/30/99)
Ok. Both are good arguments. I myself hate to limit someone who wants to be in just on the fact that they haven't read all the Annals. Like some of you have said, maybe a new recruit hasn't read all the Annals yet. But even though a newbie may not know all the answers to the questions we are going to put forth to them, Officers should. At least, the highest of the high. Look at who was familiar with the Annals in Croaker and Murgen's books: the Captain, and the head Lt. For us, since we're all big fans of the Annals, this shouldn't be a problem. Perhaps, we can use the test as a determining factor as to placement of the recruit. We should at least work up a test, in the event we decide to use it.
That said, so far we have three volunteers (and, no, we didn't volunteer them, they did it themselves) to work up some questions for the books:
The Black Company-Vermilion
Shadows Linger-
The White Rose-
Shadow Games-
The Silver Spike-Caspian
Dreams of Steel-
Bleak Seasons-Nose
She Is the Darkness-
Water Sleeps-
5)Black Company Adventures Shift over to a different reality now.
We've been ahving a busy time of it. First the horse raid went well. Got a lot of poop factories for the new recruits to clean up after. But it will help up a lot with out mobility. And it will help us in our move to the caves. That seems to be going as planned and with no hitches. The spookpushers have it camoflagues and booby-trapped. So watch your step!
1Packrat pretty well explains why our little band is weird. "There is an anomaly with the Black Company: it is the wrong size. Mercenary companies were usually small, maybe 250 men, which fits the "squad, platoon, company" structure Katarr outlined. This also fits with the officers --a company would be led by a Captain. The Lieutenant in this case is not a rank but a title, equivalent to "Executive Officer" or
XO, the one who handles the housekeeping for the company -- discipline, training, pay,
etc. -- which is (in the US Army) covered by S1 (Personnel). There are no designated
lieutenants, and there should be, to command the platoons. (Up till W.W.II, I believe,
combat lieutenants were called "platoon leaders". We know what happens to leaders --
they get the first arrow. There was a disproportionate loss of young officers, and most of
them were the good ones that were needed to become senior officers. The title was
changed to "platoon commander" and tactics were changed to protect him.) Until armies
started taking care of their men (supplying food instead of foraging, caring for the sick or
wounded, supplying weapons and uniforms) most of the S4 (Supply) functions (and many
of the S1 functions also) were handled by outsiders. Croaker would be an unusual asset.
We don't know if he was a doctor before he joined the Company, or became one by OJT
(On the Job Training) and gravitated to that full-time. The episode in The Windy Country
in book 1 makes me think he was originally a soldier. Notice that no mention is made of
anyone being responsible for supplies, food, or other soldierly necessities. Often Free
Companies relied on their contract sponsor to handle this. When they had no contract, in
battle, or when the sponsor reneged on these, the soldiers got their own supplies. If the
sponsor reneged, the preference was to take them from people on his lands, though this
wasn't always possible.
So it looks like we have a company, with unknown names for the groupings of squad and
platoon, with corporals (squad leaders?) and sergeants (platoon leaders? could happen),
specialists (wizards and doctor; I can't remember any others being specified), under a
Captain, whose lieutenant is called The Lieutenant but who functions as the Executive
Officer for the Company. The only problem is that this handles at most about 250 people.
(A 12-man squad is frequently broken into 4-man "fire teams" or into "half-squads",
because in battle 12 people are too much to control.) Free Companies were usually
under-strength, and were paid by the number of men, not the size derived from the name.
But even a 400-man Free Company would probably call itself a Regiment, and the
commander a Colonel, especially if, like the Black Company contracted to the Lady, it
was given independent responsibilities. Pacifying a region, like the Salient, or investing a
castle or satisfying a provincial governor, as they did in Juniper. And controlling a
thousand men, as they did at the Stairs of Tear (is that "teer", as in drop, or "tare", as in
rend?), was certainly the job of a Regiment. Of course, most of the grunts in the
Company could be considered as cadre, and could have trained and lead others, so everyone would be acting at at least one rank higher than he held."(Packrat (9/26/99)
If'n yous thinks of sumpin' else, let me know.