Norseman to be honest I'm a tad drunk right now but I'll try to adress your points as best I can.
Norseman wrote:1. The lack of servants, do understand that even the poorest Draka would be used to having a couple of serfs to do his donkey work (like ironing) when they're not in the field.
Evans is in the field. And it's probably not something he thinks about. Having legions of slaves to the grunt work for you is actually not as alien to a white collar American as it may at first seem: the main difference is you don't have to be polite to the waiters, gas station attendants etc. because you have the power of life and death over them. Serfs are the Dominate's blue collar class basically IIRC.
2. Sex, Draka have lots of serf women who CAN'T say no, the average Drakan male would have lost his cherry by the tender age of 15, if not earlier.
A Draka spends from ages 5 to 20 in what essentially amounts to a military training camp, a sex segregated military training camp (actually it's supposedly "twenty years of training" but 25 seems a little old for a new recruit to me so I bumped it down a little). I imagine they would see very few women period, serf or Citizen, in that time. I suppose they could knock up the janitor at their pleasure but generally the opportunities for loosing your virginity would be very rare in that environment, I would think.
Junghalli wrote:Norseman to be honest I'm a tad drunk right now but I'll try to adress your points as best I can.
Norseman wrote:1. The lack of servants, do understand that even the poorest Draka would be used to having a couple of serfs to do his donkey work (like ironing) when they're not in the field.
Evans is in the field. And it's probably not something he thinks about. Having legions of slaves to the grunt work for you is actually not as alien to a white collar American as it may at first seem: the main difference is you don't have to be polite to the waiters, gas station attendants etc. because you have the power of life and death over them. Serfs are the Dominate's blue collar class basically IIRC.
Yes but these aren't personal servants and the master/servant etiquette has been lost by most Americans.
Junghalli wrote:
2. Sex, Draka have lots of serf women who CAN'T say no, the average Drakan male would have lost his cherry by the tender age of 15, if not earlier.
A Draka spends from ages 5 to 20 in what essentially amounts to a military training camp, a sex segregated military training camp (actually it's supposedly "twenty years of training" but 25 seems a little old for a new recruit to me so I bumped it down a little). I imagine they would see very few women period, serf or Citizen, in that time. I suppose they could knock up the janitor at their pleasure but generally the opportunities for loosing your virginity would be very rare in that environment, I would think.
Uhm no... that's not it, they spend six to nine months out of the year in boarding schools till they enter the military at about 18, but the rest of the year they spend at home where there are plenty of serfs.
Additionally there are lots of serfs of both genders in the boarding schools and even on military bases, also even in the field ALL the scutwork would be done by serfs unless you are right on the front.
Norseman wrote:Yes but these aren't personal servants and the master/servant etiquette has been lost by most Americans.
True. As I pointed out, we're seeing military life here.
BTW, what's the ratio of Draka to serfs? It's about one to five, right (70 million Drak to 350 million total Dominate citizens and subjects)? Isn't that a little high for everyone to have several personal servants, considering that logically most serf labor would go to the most labor-intensive areas of society (namely industry and farming)? Especially as the Draka deliberately restrict automation to keep their slaves nice an busy so they don't have time to do fun stuff like plan rebellions.
Uhm no... that's not it, they spend six to nine months out of the year in boarding schools till they enter the military at about 18, but the rest of the year they spend at home where there are plenty of serfs.
OK. I was basing Draka society off Spartan society, where the military basically took over as a substitute parent. Under the Spartan model you basically would rarely if ever see your parents while you were undergoing training, for among other reasons probably they thought keeping you there 24/7/365 let them instill maximum badassitude into you (which does seem to go with the Draka philosophy of concentrating on making the individual as formidable as possible by training and drilling the everliving fuck out of him). Also it seemed like the most likely way to enforce the Draka's supposed uniform of opinion that makes free elections essentially irrelevant (get the kids young, have the govt teach them the facts of life, and you never have to worry about democracy!).
Shrug.
consequences wrote:Likewise, other Draka would deliberately cock-block him whenever he looked to be making a play for a serf-girl.
I summon forth the semi-plausible explanations from mine anus!
If I had to come up with an explanation I'd point out that while prostitutes are freely available in some American states the majority of people in those states still don't frequent them. Human beings do have a tendency to desire relationships, and have a certain aversion to porking others' sloppy seconds. The portrayal of virtual all Draka as sex-mad horndogs continuously sticking it into anything they could get their hands on never struck me as terribly realistic. Sure, some people are like that, but everyone?
Fainthearted be warned, this chapter contains a description of an exceptionally gruesome and disgusting method of killing.
JUNE 7 1940
I didn’t expect to have to fight today, but that’s not the way things worked out I guess. It was supposed to be a routine, easy operation. We were to relieve an airborne unit that had been sent in ahead of the main force to take a critical refueling station and disorganize Russian troop movements. Last report the place had been secured. I suppose the higher-ups must have known but the first sign I got that something wasn’t going right was when our convoy went from traveling to attack formation. The next sign was when somebody started shooting at us. So I turned to the guy next to me and asked what the heck was going on and he said what did I fucking well think was going on.
Turned out that the place had been secured but somebody up high somewhere had screwed up and put the airborne unit too far from any possible reinforcement or resupply. The Russkies took the place back.
We used our tanks to punch through their defenses and then sent the infantry in. It was harder than last time. There were more Russkies in there this time. But once we’d gotten through their perimeter the outcome was pretty much predetermined anyway. Most of them went down fighting. We took a couple of wounded. No civvies this time, they must have either been killed along with the defenders the first time around or they were evacuated by the Russkies after they retook the place. Then we went into one little house on the edge of the refueling station. I’m not sure I want to talk about that but I will.
There was no fire coming from it and we thought we’d eliminated the last resistance, but we had to secure it anyway. They sent my lochos out to do it. The door’s locked so Arminius kicks it in. And then we noticed the smell. Blood and something thick and rotting, like spoiling meat, and underneath that a barely noticeable sweaty smell. The inside is a mess, and the floor is covered with clothes. They looked to be mostly women’s clothes. Some looked torn or shredded, or had blood dried on them. And lying around were five men and one woman. The men looked like they’d been given an especially cruel time on the breaking wheel. Some had been stabbed, again and again, like Caesar was supposedly stabbed in the Roman Senate long ago, lying in giant pools of their own dried blood. Lying around them were pots and pans and blocks of wood and all kinds heavy blunt objects smashed and dented and covered with blood and sometimes even hair and other stuff I didn’t want to think about, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out these were the things that had been used to pound their faces in. Their clothes were torn and soiled, but we could still recognize the red dragon on the shoulder patches and some of their rank insignia. They were Citizen enlisted men. The men were bad, but the woman was the worst. By far the worst.
When I first saw her I thought she must have been shot, because she looked fairly intact compared to the others. She had been muscular, flat-chested, and looked almost painfully young. She was very small, with short blonde hair, blue eyes, and a small nose and mouth. I knew she had to be older of course but she didn’t look a day over thirteen. There were bloody handprints on her uniform jacket, as if several people had been holding her down. Her legs had been forced apart, and there was a huge pool of coagulated blood on the floorboards between them. Dark rivulets of the stuff had run down the inner legs of her pants. Embedded between her thighs was the bloody hilt of what had to be a rather large kitchen knife. It took me a moment to actually understand what I was looking at, and when I did I felt dizzy for a minute. Stamped in the blood on the hilt was the clear impression of fingers, and the wound was too ragged and torn for her to just have been stabbed. It was a good deal wider than the blade of the knife itself, and looked sawed. She hadn’t just had the knife stuck into her, she’d actually been fucked with it. The wielder had plunged it into her to the edge of the blade and then grabbed the hilt and violently thrust it into her again and again in a hideous parody of intercourse until she finally died from blood loss or sheer pain. The muscles of her face had relaxed in death but I thought that in her unfocused stare I could still see a look of horrible, uncomprehending terror and agony. There was still a little dry spit on her chin from, I realized, what must have been a very great deal of screaming. Her hands were lax now, but I could see the blood driven under her fingernails from clenching her fists so hard she cut her own palm. The wound was very wide, and gravity had naturally pulled the blade down toward her backside. I realized that in her last minutes of life she would have had to listen to the grating sound of the blade sawing into her pelvis with every push. I hope she didn’t live too long. Freya that must be a horrible, horrible way to die.
Arminius told us later exactly what happened. When they airborne units had taken over the refueling station they had taken some prisoners, mostly women. Some of the men had begun taking advantage of the female prisoners. Later, the Russians attacked the place and retook it. They discovered what the Draka had done and it had enraged them. Several Draka had been wounded and taken alive, and the Russians threw them to the women to avenge their violations. The prisoners we captured did not know exactly what the women did to these men, but whatever it was they were happy to know it was fatal and probably quite nasty. Some did notice that the wounded female Citizen, especially, screamed very hard and very long. They hadn’t even needed any persuasion to spill the story. The translator said they seemed downright happy to tell it to us. Arminius was in one of his usual rages, and wanted to kill them all painfully. He spent half the day telling us about all the things he’d do to them if it was up to him. But the Centurion is a little more cool-headed, and just had them shot. I don’t feel comfortable with killing helpless men, but then they did much worse to ours. I feel more sorry for that poor girl, whatever her name was. I know it’s war and things like this are only inevitable. I wonder if that could have given her any comfort at all as her womb and lower intestines was being slowly shredded with a foot-long knife.
Oh, fuck, that's nasty. I actually felt slightly sick reading that, though if anything that shows what a good job you've done invoking that horrific image.
Good work.
Post Number 1066 achieved Sun Feb 22, 2009 3:19 pm(board time, 8:19GMT)
Batman: What do these guys want anyway?
Superman: Take over the world... Or rob banks, I'm not sure.
We hit another road town today. Same story, pretty much. We shelled it a little and then used the infantry the defenders down. This town wasn’t as heavily defended as the other two we took, but it was bigger. That’s good; I think maybe they didn’t expect us to be getting this far this fast. I guess that means the war must be going well. One of our men, JM Falkenburg, bought it today. Got shot three or five times in the chest, I think. Too bad for his family, I think he had a wife and kids back home.
These Russkies fought pretty fiercely. We killed most of them. Hell, half the women started going at us with cooking knives when we busted in on them, we had to kill most of them too. No great loss. Yeah, it’s too bad when people die, even if they’re inferiors, but it’s not like this country already has more rebellions and insurgencies than it can handle. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. When it was over they gave me prisoner guard duty. Arminius always gives me jobs like that while everyone else gets to relax. Fuck him.
It had been cloudy and cold all day, and sometime in the early afternoon it started to rain hard. It wasn’t like any kind of rain you see in Durban, even during the rainy season there. It wasn’t so much that it was exceptionally violent, but that it was cold. The raindrops were like ice, and they hit hard. It was already so cold I could see my breath. It felt like standing in a freezer being pelted with half-thawed bits of ice. The rain quickly soaked through my uniform, making it cling to my skin. My hands were white and numb, I couldn’t feel my fingers at all. The prisoners were even more miserable than I was of course. At least I could stand behind a parked APC and get a little protection. They were totally out in the open. And at least I had a jacket.
Doing guard duty with me was JM Carpenter. I mention this because to be honest I think I have a little bit of a crush on the woman. No particular reason I don’t think. She’s an OK person but I don’t really know her very well. She’s good looking but not spectacular. Actually, contrary to some of the ludicrous propaganda, very few Draka women are. They’re usually muscular and flat chested. Anybody who spends from five to twenty in a physically rigorous training program and then another five years in the army and comes out of that looking like a statuesque Greek goddess is a massive cosmic injustice. I think maybe the reason is that, like me, she looks like she might not be completely racially pure, and she takes abuse for it. In her case she looks almost Greek, with her angular jaw, small mouth, thin eyebrows, and dark brown eyes. She’s short and compact and muscular, with curly brown hair that she ties behind her to keep it out of her eyes.
Anyway, we’re on guard duty, and Carpenter notices that one of the prisoners isn’t doing so well. It’s a small girl, maybe eight or nine, and she’s curled miserably up against what I guess is her mother. Carpenter says the adults may be able to handle this but a small girl shouldn’t be out in this weather without any protection, and I tell her that maybe we should bring this up with the Centurion. She shakes her head, says the Centurion wouldn’t do anything, he wouldn’t consider unbroken serfs worthy of any consideration. She goes off into the APC and comes back with something. She holds it out and it’s a piece of a tent. It’s been torn up and there are bullet holes in it, so it’s useless. It’s probably something somebody pulled out of a wrecked APC. The dragon symbol of the Dominate was stamped on it very big. I took if from her and held it out toward the girl. She saw me and tried to crawl back. Her mother put an arm around her protectively and backed away from me. She was afraid of me, and I hate to say that for a moment that actually made me feel good. It made me feel powerful. In school and in the army I’ve always been the one to look the other way when some people pass, to look down and speak softly when spoken to. It had never occurred to me that I might be scary to anybody. I shoved those thoughts down and smiled at her, held out the torn piece of waterproofed fabric in my hand. She pushed the girl behind her, a look of resignation and horror in her eyes. She was trying to cover her body with her hands, as if she were naked and was trying to project a bare minimum of modesty. I realized she was probably convinced I was going to rape her. It felt surreal to me, because if anything I’ve always been a little scared of sex. And in a way it fed the good feeling of having somebody scared of you. As far as I could remember this was the closest thing I’d gotten to respect from a woman. Heh, how pathetic is that, right? But I shoved that thought down too and pointed to her daughter and then shook the tent-flap. I don’t think she understood very well. I tried again and this time pantomimed covering myself in a blanket. Then I dropped the fabric into the woman’s hands. She looked at it, not understanding. I pointed at the child, hugged myself and shivered theatrically, trying to convey the idea of cold. I starting imitating the action of pulling the tarp over myself like a robe, but the woman must have somehow misinterpreted the ‘I’m cold’ gesture because the second she saw it she shrieked something in Russians, threw the piece of tarp in the mud, and stamped on it. By the time she was done it was covered with clinging wet dirt. She kicked it to one side and held her daughter tightly.
Carpenter looked over at me and asked, what the hell was wrong with her?
Serfs are the Dominate's blue collar class basically IIRC.
