A lesson in loyalty for young Sonja

[stubbleupdate]

Now, in the status quo, Red Sonja is Queen Sonja, charged with repelling a superior invading army from her borders.
But in her recent history she was a mercenary adventurer.




So...what's the moral of this story?


Christian Ward (I have one of his pieces in my hall)

Julian Totino Tedesco

Comments

[owlbrigade1]

"So...what's the moral of this story?"

The guy that is trying to bribe your soldiers, shoot that guy in the face with an arrow and nick all their money, and stick their body in a gibbet as a warning to anybody else that bribery doesn't pay. Also, the first group that signed up with him for that gold coin, they now get no money but do get all the dangerous and/or mucky jobs from now on.

I'm bad at morals.

[draganoche]

Well your first step doesn't work since Sonja apparently needs to capture this guy alive.

[stubbleupdate]

The first step suggested is to kill the man offering the job, not the man she's been hired to capture.

[owlbrigade1]

As long as somebody gets killed, that is all that matters. [g]

[raspberryrain]

You are also bad at pragmatism. You'd be encouraging a mutiny among companions who were already willing to walk away for a cheap bribe.

[tcampbell1000]

I guess the idea here is that what Sonja's employer could do, the General could do, and better to find out who's really loyal now than to find out by having her men turn on her for ten gold pieces each.

Still, it seems like the offer of a farm means a lot more from an established government employee than a guy who's on the run for his life.

[nyadnar17]

Man do you think those two guys that stayed were just hoping for a better buy out option?

[crimsonmoonmist]

Naturally, this guy is clearly willing to part with a huge amount of riches just to make a point. Going by his ludicrous bids, it'd be a reasonable assumption that he'd keep on raising the stakes until not even a single mercenary was left at her side.

[lonewolf23k]

To be fair, if her men are more greedy for coin then afraid of her anger, she hasn't beaten them into loyalty yet.

[lieut_kettch]

For context, at that time, Sonja was studying under Domo of Khitai, the Hyborean Age's Sun Tzu expy. The lesson was more important than the mission. The moral was basically that loyalty bought with money is basically suspect.

[cricharddavies]

In addition to the lesson about loyalty not coming from coin, Sonja later acknowledges that she wouldn't have been able to complete the mission with all those men, and that a small unit can be better than a large one for actually getting things done.

[janegray]

So what happens to the two guys who stayed? I hope they don't die.