General Writing Questions

[Archon]

I decided that some questions about writing aren't worth their own thread, so if we group them all together, then they might be worth a thread.

My first submission, how do you refer to a group of soldiers in fantasy? Do you use the standard "squad, platoon, company.....?" I ask because I used that system recently, but whenever I think of platoon I think of modern army or marines.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I disagree. Many writing questions deserve their own thread. Questions like "What do you call" don't often require it, but others do.

ANyway, you call them anything you want. The more closely your setting corresponds to an actual culture, the more you'll want to use the terms that culture used. However, if it's completely original, call it anything you want.

Terms like "platoon" and "century" are fairly specific in size, but terms like "squad" are often used as a generic grouping, so you might want to keep that in mind when choosing your terms.

[EUOL]

Platoon does make me think of a modern military force, personally.  I tend to be less specific with my names, or come up with my own words for groupings of men.

[Spriggan]

If you can bug Entropy to post here I'm sure he'd give you some good stuff.

I personaly would go with roman/greek names like Phalanx and legion.

A legion is layed out thusly, and you can change the names to sute your setting.

8 soldgers= 1 tent group
10 tent groups= 1 centuary (the commander is the centurian)
6 centuarys= 1 cohort
10 chorts=1 legion.


The thing with fantasy is there's no real wrong way to handle this since it's your world.  Useing the standard modern miliary layout saves some time and possible confustion since most readers will allready be somewhat familiar with them.  However, it's realy hard to pull out a "standard" medevil army origization since every country had their own system, and lots of those changed over the years.

I agree with you that Platoon sounds funny, that's why I'd replace it with your own.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uhm.. a century is only 64 people? THat can't be right, since the word century comes from the fact that it was 100 people.

[Spriggan]

nope, centuary rarely had 100 people in it (despite the rumors to the contary).  Acutaly I had a typo there, 10 tent groups (not equal a centuary, a century was 81 men (don't forget the commander).

[Firemeboy]

You could always call them a gaggle...

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Originally a century was a unit of 100 men,... but the Romans made it smaller to increase the flexibilty of the legions... the name stuck though...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

a flock!

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

medaevil folk like the words troop or band.... Military units are kind of a modern era thing...

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

"Bunch 'a guys wid pointy sticks