#warfare strategy

[ria-writes-stories]

Warfare plotting/strategy sample

Upcoming Stark!Reader showing why she was a great option as a betrothed to Jacaerys Velaryon and why her spot in Rhaenyra's small council is justified.

Slightly unhinged/mad Reader ahead @sins-of-the-dragons

Once again implied Jacaerys Velaryon x Stark!Reader, and Stark!Reader pulling her weight in the small council because she gotta keep her game up for her future mother-in-law.

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"Well- most… battles lately have been on the sea… that is the expertise of Lord Corlys Velaryon and perhaps, of course- only if they share any sort of knowledge, other Velaryon descendants may be familiar with. I… am not. Folklore tales and stories of the sea aren't exactly… practical in an actual battle in the salty water. Nor are the methods used by pirates to deal with traitors of any help in something such as open warfare."

"Warfare in the history of the north is… different, my queen. I've tried to make myself familiar with the library of this palace, seek out different strategies… but each time it feels- unfit. Yes, wars have been fought before, no doubt. Yes, some ideas I was able to extract and convert or apply to our current times, but not all are flexible ideas. This is a war of dragons. They are the most prized possession while also being the most powerful weapon. Putting them out would be an act of desperation, not putting them out at all would be a disadvantage. At the end of the day, all the losses will accumulate. Any harm we do now may also be ours to solve after the war ends when we come out of it victorious. The damages, the lost people, the lost resources, it will fall on the shoulders of whoever sits on the throne."

"All I can think of are the old tricks in the book which I am not sure can even be used without losing. Camps moving under the cover of the night, ambush in the swamps, ambush in crosses in the mountains. Yes, I am aware how everything is practically an ambush, blame my ancestors, House Stark had to form itself before being a big and great house before Aegon the conqueror, and until then we were nothing but civilized barbarians and savages, most likely anybody else really."

"Unless your highness has a way of making sirens and mermaids real to mess with the masses' moral and sanity then I am not sure what we could-…" And she went quiet. Lady Stark's abrupt silence often meant something anew sparked within her mind. "We could." Lady Stark said with a frown.

-

"How… often does fog rise up on the sea? Is it dependent on the season or just the weather?" Lasy Stark asked while looking around in the council room. She was mainly looking at Addam of Hull. "And… how… frequent would fogs be in this time of the year?" She paused between her words briefly to ponder on the idea that was forming in her mind. "And would this fog be thick enough so that a man from a ship cannot see even ten feet in front of him?"

-

Lady Stark stayed quiet for a while. "Decoys." She said while looking at the map. "Fog, a small boat, a sailor to be able to handle the boat, the paddling and all that, and a proper singer on it, must be female. Water propagates sound, the fog messes with the vision- We could have decoy makeshift sirens to mess with the enemy troops."

"And we don't have to do much. Just ensure their mind goes fuzzy. Let's see how long it takes before they run their ship into sharp rocks in the madness of trying to escape, and let's see how quickly and stealthily our own men can make their way towards the enemy boat unnoticed and conquer it. If we got our hands on one singular ship of theirs, without raising concern, without raising it as missing, doing it in the middle of the night in the open sea, and then approaching other enemy boats with it, they won't even expect our men to be on it. They'd think something had happened, the reason why the ship is approaching, and they wouldn't raise their weapons immediately. The cover of the night, fog, madness, and some very skilled individuals. The sheer terror will be enough to make them back away or dare force them to bring a dragon to the battle, and I'd just dread, if some heavy old green oversized lizard would fly just too low and hit itself in a ship and end up drowning. Vhagar is great for a battle in the sky, but its weight and speed aren't enough to be as precise, and you must approach at least slightly in order to burn a ship."

"Let them think it's a curse. Let them feel the conscience of their actions seep into their bones, and let them simmer to a boil until they jump out of those damned ships themselves to escape the cries and wails of the innocent souls they deprived us of. We're not putting singers out there. We're putting proper actors. Sing beautifully once, scream in anger the next day, follow it up with wailing, and change the order randomly. Maniac laughs, vengeful cries. Let them go mad with the idea that all that we lost at sea, their own men alike, became little feasts for the 'sirens' to enjoy. And they wait idly, keeping themselves company with their voice, waiting to pray on them too."

-

"Better yet, have them kill each other. One mermaid as a distraction, and while the crew is busy trying to cover their ears or marvel on board, just have to cover their ears or marvel on board, just have one stealthy proper man sneak in and change the flag to ours while nobody is present. When light hits I doubt they'll notice their flag had been changed before one of their ally ships attacks them full force and kills a couple of men before the mistake is rectified. It's not like the sailors from all these boats know one another personally to be able to recognize the crew as being on their side and not ours."

-

"Well. I'm great at imagining theory, but not at doing the practical work, the biggest flaw in each of my plans. Those who have more expertise in naval warfare, feel free to correct me." She said while sitting down and taking her marble back. "The principal is simple. We spread fear, curses, and paranoia on their side and let it take its toll."

[fireangel]

Random thoughts:

I was thinking about my scarf comment giving "Ithacan tapestry vibes" and my brain started churning

I started thinking about the story itself somehow being altered over time to not include the infamous sweater curse

If you are unfamiliar with it, basically it is bad luck to knit your betrothed a sweater before you are married and it spells misfortune for your nuptials - hence choosing to do a scarf for Joshua

My thought was that perhaps Odysseus was not actually married to his wife Penelope, and she was in fact waiting for him to come back from his journey, and it was a "sweater" she was weaving - think Jane Austen's Persuasion

Stories like the Odyssey and The Iliad are ancient Greece's form of Chaucer tales, they are designed to teach skills through narratives that draw details from real life examples

Take the story of Troy - while some people view it as the story of two people fighting for love and the right to choose their partner I'm not so romantically minded about it

Helen is not a character I ever viewed as an actual woman, but rather as a symbol for commodity - trade routes, natural resources, water supplies etc and the story is a layout for methods of achieving control of those commodities through deception and warfare tactics

The interesting thing I find about Homer is that no one seems able to pin down his birthplace or origins for certain and it wasn't until well after his death that the stories were written down

I am of the opinion that the actual person did not exist but was instead a type of nom de plume, now what would I base that psuedo-intellectual possibility on?

Firstly the name "Homer" thought to mean "Hostage, Security, Pledge" all seemingly relate to things related to warfare and military, a clue that the name is drawn from the theme of the stories themselves, the fact they are written in poem form to make them easier to remember for the average non reading citizen is another clue they are designed to be memorised (much like Hymnals and National Anthems)

Sun Tzu - the famous writer of "The Art of War" is not actually a name either, Tzu is an honorific title meaning "Master" and Sun being his family name. It has been speculated that he was not the sole author of the strategy manuscripts but was one of many co-contributing authors over time

With Homer in most respects being tied to the Anatolian area (Modern day Turkey) being on the edge of Asia I do wonder if there was a transference of knowledge of warfare tactics out of Eastern Asia (China) into Asia Minor (Middle East) through oral tradition and that much like Sun Tzu he was not in fact a singular person, but a collection of people.......

However give the regional proximity, this could also mean that the stories attributed to the almost mystical figure of Homer -

That weren't written down until long after his supposed death

Were possibly have been strategy story narratives used as teaching tools to the wider general population who at the time did not have a widespread reading skill set who learned this through listening to the stories as that was the most common method at the time

Did in fact originate further east from a much older civilisation

When you think about it, recreating stories without attributing the original source and giving someone else credit for it is an ages old trick when you don't actually have any respect for the original author

After all, there is an entire industry in California that's built a global financial Empire by doing it