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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1526205" data-attributes="member: 6533">Well, some more chiming would be fine with me, I love this topic.Some complications:First, the Feudal model works very differently depending on where and when you are.  This isn't just a question of national differences.  The model is constantly being renegotiated in most of the places where it exists.#1The king owning all of the land is very much an English model.  Based on the particular exigencies of William conquering all of England.  Even that model didn't work very well.You do generally owe allegiance to some sort of King or Emperor, possibly both, no matter where you were but that was a result of a set of legal arguments and political/cultural realities that had very little to do with the various Feudal systems.The most basic premise of the Feudal system is that you owe service, also possibly specie, and some degree of obedience to someone else in return for which you get rights and services and enter into a more or less universal network of larger relationships that enable to more or less get things done no matter where you are and what you are doing.#2It's much more problematic to call the Roman legion system modern than most people think.  Certainly we would like to call it modern and professional and the three things do have a lot in common, but from the basic viewpoint of pay and national and institutional organization the Roman Legion doesn't work very well.It's not so much that the Legion was older than the senate or vice versa so much as the institutions developed independently of each other.  How does a military system grow up independently of the government that created/creates it you ask?Well, good point.  I don't know if you have been following the whole Warlords of the Accordlands fictions but they come pretty close to modelling legions.The legions, by the time you hit the empire, are basicly independent societies hired by the Emperor to work for the Roman People.  It used to be that the Senate would 'hire' - note a most crude term - individuals to go out and work with them to hire and organize legions.  These armies would then be sent out to do the business of the empire.  This system got crazy because the legions and the people who hired them got crazy.  They reached the War of the Roses level, the Senate - which was never really that stable an entity - got paranoid, and the equitable end of the solution was that a whole seperate political structure, the emperor and his slave beauracracy and governors, got set up to act as the specific liason between the legions and the rest of the society.The relationship between the emperor and the legions went back and forth a number of times.Meantime the legions, who are really a more or less seperate series of societies, get crazier and less and less useful.  Eventually they're just too obsolete and the Western Empire falls apart for a variety of reasons, a few legions actually survived its fall which is an awesome story, and the Eastern Empire puts together better systems.The important thing to remember about the Imperial legions, and that's what most people mean when they say Roman and Legion together, is that those guys were in those units for 20 years.  That's the standard stint, there were periods when it was a lot longer, and that's a crazy long time for anybody to do anything much less be in active service.  This during a time period where people simply didn't live as long as we do now, despite being otherwise nearly indestructible.  It's certainly not the way any modern or contemporary army is organized and creates odd situations.  It's a tremendous advantage, and it's also nothing you can do if you want the military to actually be a part of your society.The pay records for the empire are a pretty good indication of why the system of legions is so different from what anyone knows today.  Not too mention the criminal procedures developed to deal with them.In Warlords legions are basically the functioning organizational system of the Orcish tribes and that's a lot closer to the truth than most people are comfortable with.Don't get me wrong Legions were certainly cool and we are right to emulate many of their charecteristics, but I sincerely doubt that any recreational society could capture their larger and more fundamental social reality.Another hella cool thing to look at are Turkish Janissaries and Egyptian Mamelukes.  Now those guys were professional military.</blockquote>

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