Honorverse ramblings and musings

Duckk wrote:

saber964 wrote:Forgot an obvious one,

Surgeon Commander Alfred Karl Harrington (ret)

I was leaving Honor's family off the list.

Okay, but what about Roslee Orndorff and Airstophones Georgides.

Neither was I making a comprehensive list. The point was that there are plenty of Sphinxians in the text.

The Alignment naval forces used in Oyster Bay are what we have shown. We know that they are building the Lenny Det's but have no idea how many or what the crew needs are.

We can presume that any of the nominaly "civilian" ships which use the hidden wormhole network are probably crewed by Alignent Naval Force personel but they may or may not have any combat experience. Sneaky and clandestine ops, sure, but actual fighting perhaps not. Even the blocking force on the other side of the Torch end of that bridge is made up of Mannerheim SDF ships and personel although how that is working (how many are acutal Alignment besides the officers and will they now ever leave) and if Darius has any replacement ships with crews for them.

A question could be: How many of the Darius population not specificaly in the Star Lines would be or are considered acceptable to use in crewing hypercapable warships? Not "can they be trained" but would they be an acceptable source of at least "enlisted" crew to build up the naval forces?
The Alignment was working on a timeline centuries long. They had to rush stuff, now they have to continue to alter the actual operations and scheduling to adjust. Sure, they had a plan to train the LD crews but now they may need a lot more ships and still only have the intial cadre (we have been told about) of testbed/training ships of the Sharks and Ghosts to train crews for the LD. What else do they have, or perhaps, what else SHOULD they have and were operating as training and servicing ships for fleet support? Fleet train ships? Repair/engineering ships?
Ammunition ships?
Do you REALLY want to send out spyder drive LD's on missions and then have them be forced to get back into the hidden wormhole network to resupply and rearm? Why not a rondevous at some point in the middle of nowhere and unrep?

How long is it going to take the Alignment to both train more naval personel and create new people and then train them? Sure, they can go with uterine replecators but you have to grow the clones, train them and then do the navy training and -hopefully- give them some experience before throwing them into combat.

Ah well, plot device.

Duckk wrote:Harold Tschu, Cynthia McTierny, Linda Watson, Joanna Agnelli, Victoria Saunders...

What about Dominica Adenauer, Gold Peak's Operations Officer? Actually claims relationship with Honor.

Again, not making a comprehensive list.

Duckk wrote:Neither was I making a comprehensive list. The point was that there are plenty of Sphinxians in the text.

In your defense Duckk, and as far as I'm concerned, you did imply that there were many more with the included ellipsis at the end of your initial response.



Having said that—and no way does it detract from the many responses—I notice that most of the supplied names served in some capacity short of "Mistress after god."

Chief of engineering, executive officer, staff communications officer, chief steward's mate, etc. With the sole exception, as far as I've found...

Victoria Saunders: In 1920 PD, Saunders was in command of the superdreadnought HMS Hercules, flagship of Rear Admiral Augustus Khumalo during his assignment to the Talbott Cluster. Her executive officer at the time, Commander Richard Gaunt, did not meet her expectations for a command level officer, so she decided to add the notion to his evaluation that she found him "not recommended for independent command", effectively taking any chance of ever getting his own ship from him. (SI1)

Albeit, I must say that that is a huge contribution if she prevented someone from taking the helm, for whatever reason, that wasn't ready for it.

Wish someone would have done that to Pavel Young and Elvis Santino. Which makes me wonder just how much crap was in their personnel file and how it must have mysteriously disappeared.

Young must have been someone's XO. And I cannot believe that he had a stellar performance AND didn't rate a "not ready for command" which should have killed his chances of ever tainting Warlock.

Of course, he could have been an XO in the "good old boy" network.

Oh, Aristophonese Georgides was in command of HMSS Vulcan Space Station.

Aristophonese Georgides was in command of HMSS Vulcan Space Station.

I always wondered if the people who commanded space stations were those that failed the Crusher or something. It isn't like a space station is ever going to be taken into hyper. Short of volunteering to command a space station because it had always been your goal, seems it falls short of command of a starship.

Not that it isn't an important job, that is.

Brigade XO wrote:The Alignment naval forces used in Oyster Bay are what we have shown. We know that they are building the Lenny Det's but have no idea how many or what the crew needs are.

We can presume that any of the nominaly "civilian" ships which use the hidden wormhole network are probably crewed by Alignent Naval Force personel but they may or may not have any combat experience. Sneaky and clandestine ops, sure, but actual fighting perhaps not. Even the blocking force on the other side of the Torch end of that bridge is made up of Mannerheim SDF ships and personel although how that is working (how many are acutal Alignment besides the officers and will they now ever leave) and if Darius has any replacement ships with crews for them.

A question could be: How many of the Darius population not specificaly in the Star Lines would be or are considered acceptable to use in crewing hypercapable warships? Not "can they be trained" but would they be an acceptable source of at least "enlisted" crew to build up the naval forces?
The Alignment was working on a timeline centuries long. They had to rush stuff, now they have to continue to alter the actual operations and scheduling to adjust. Sure, they had a plan to train the LD crews but now they may need a lot more ships and still only have the intial cadre (we have been told about) of testbed/training ships of the Sharks and Ghosts to train crews for the LD. What else do they have, or perhaps, what else SHOULD they have and were operating as training and servicing ships for fleet support? Fleet train ships? Repair/engineering ships?
Ammunition ships?
Do you REALLY want to send out spyder drive LD's on missions and then have them be forced to get back into the hidden wormhole network to resupply and rearm? Why not a rondevous at some point in the middle of nowhere and unrep?

How long is it going to take the Alignment to both train more naval personel and create new people and then train them? Sure, they can go with uterine replecators but you have to grow the clones, train them and then do the navy training and -hopefully- give them some experience before throwing them into combat.

Ah well, plot device.

Lots of good points Brigade XO. I don't find it keeping with their MO to not have a contingent of officers already on the assembly lines and ready for training. Why wait? Even if your time table is way off into the future, training can be started early and passed down. I always assumed training would come from the RF.

cthia wrote:I always wondered if the people who commanded space stations were those that failed the Crusher or something.

Stated RMN policy is to rotate officers through different commands on a routine basis. Command of space stations, training bases, or staff positions like being on the WDB are a normal part of every officer's career.

Weird Harold wrote:

cthia wrote:I always wondered if the people who commanded space stations were those that failed the Crusher or something.

Stated RMN policy is to rotate officers through different commands on a routine basis. Command of space stations, training bases, or staff positions like being on the WDB are a normal part of every officer's career.

Just can't see Honor as CO of a space station. First sign of trouble... "Will somebody get me on a fucking ship!"

If Honor's swearing, Honor's pissed! And when Honor's pissed, people die. Or somebody gets the holy hell slapped out of him.

On that note, why didn't Houseman sue Honor?