lederhosen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lederhosen) wrote2007-08-09 09:46 pm
lederhosen) wrote2007-08-09 09:46 pm
Reading
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usekh's recommendation, have been reading Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, a collection of Warhammer 40K stories about Cain, a commissar (commissars are political officers charged with maintaining unit morale - generally in a 'the floggings will continue' sort of way, although Cain tends to avoid that approach).
Every review I've seen of this compares Cain to Flashman, and there are some obvious similarities - Cain keeps ending up looking like a hero while trying to save his own skin - but it only goes so far. Flashman is an unscrupulous bastard who makes a mess of things and then manages to take credit for somebody else's success; Cain earns his successes, even if saving his comrades and defeating the enemy is an unintended side-effect of saving himself (and even there, one gets the impression he protests his own cowardice a little too much). He has a sound grasp of tactics, he has people skills, and he's smart enough to understand that commissars who are unpopular with the troops (which is the default) have a very high rate of accidental death...
Nothing world-shaking, but rather fun, and got me thinking wistfully (again) about using the 40K setting for roleplaying one of these years. It's nice to see a character who gets the job done by being prudent and planning for trouble rather than trusting in pluck alone...
usekh's recommendation, have been reading Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium, a collection of Warhammer 40K stories about Cain, a commissar (commissars are political officers charged with maintaining unit morale - generally in a 'the floggings will continue' sort of way, although Cain tends to avoid that approach).Every review I've seen of this compares Cain to Flashman, and there are some obvious similarities - Cain keeps ending up looking like a hero while trying to save his own skin - but it only goes so far. Flashman is an unscrupulous bastard who makes a mess of things and then manages to take credit for somebody else's success; Cain earns his successes, even if saving his comrades and defeating the enemy is an unintended side-effect of saving himself (and even there, one gets the impression he protests his own cowardice a little too much). He has a sound grasp of tactics, he has people skills, and he's smart enough to understand that commissars who are unpopular with the troops (which is the default) have a very high rate of accidental death...
Nothing world-shaking, but rather fun, and got me thinking wistfully (again) about using the 40K setting for roleplaying one of these years. It's nice to see a character who gets the job done by being prudent and planning for trouble rather than trusting in pluck alone...
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