Send in the Fremen,
Dec. 11th, 2002 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynfor I should like to beat them to death with the current weather. People who have adapted to survive on a planet where going outside without wearing a rubber suit to reclaim your body's water is fatal would CHOKE AND DIE in the atmosphere we have today. It's just barely above the freezing point outside, temperature-wise, it's raining, and there's snow still on the ground from last week. Atreides, ya might have the toughest bastards in the galaxy when it comes to hand-to-hand combat in a dry climate, but I seriously doubt your Fremen would be able to handle themselves in the kind of mud and ice that's accumulating out there. Hell, we're due to get around an inch of ice - an inch, and that's ice, not snow - in my home county tonight. Huang Laoshi called to cancel my Mandarin class because the school won't risk people coming in with that kind of mess on the ground. Let's see your sand rats handle that! I could take them out with a battalion of Finns on skis if they invaded at this time of year. Your people are very, very specialized and have much endurance, but one good patch of black ice on Interstate 280 and they'd be rolling around in their suits like overturned turtles.
Finns on skis and snowshoes, with rifles and flamethrowers. Even in shields your boys need oxygen exchange across the Holtzmann barrier. Napalm and the business end of a flammenwurfer do a right good job of sucking the O2 away. Have fun trying to get your shufflestepping legions to understand the mechanics of turning the crawler through ninety degrees at 20 kph without hitting the barricade along the side of the road, or trying to get the orni to take off when the entire launching area is a sheet of ice because y'all have forgotten the use of our friend, the salt crystal. My Suomi will ghost in out of the trees and KICK YOUR SORRY OVERBRED ASS. All the presicence in the world can't make up for the fact that there ain't no such thing as snow tires, ice crampons, or good winter boots on Arrakis.
... sorry, it just sort of bubbled up out of nowhere. I've always wondered just a bit how desert warriors were supposed to be the most kick-ass thing in the Galaxy when the Galaxy included worlds that might well have looked like Dagobah or worse. It'd be one thing if Paul used orbital weapons and held planets to blackmail, but the implication was that the Fremen in hand to hand combat were his primary means of overwhielming everybody. Dude. C'mere, got a little surprise for you, it's called Hoth and I stocked it full of angry Finns. Now suck it, breeder boy.
Finns on skis and snowshoes, with rifles and flamethrowers. Even in shields your boys need oxygen exchange across the Holtzmann barrier. Napalm and the business end of a flammenwurfer do a right good job of sucking the O2 away. Have fun trying to get your shufflestepping legions to understand the mechanics of turning the crawler through ninety degrees at 20 kph without hitting the barricade along the side of the road, or trying to get the orni to take off when the entire launching area is a sheet of ice because y'all have forgotten the use of our friend, the salt crystal. My Suomi will ghost in out of the trees and KICK YOUR SORRY OVERBRED ASS. All the presicence in the world can't make up for the fact that there ain't no such thing as snow tires, ice crampons, or good winter boots on Arrakis.
... sorry, it just sort of bubbled up out of nowhere. I've always wondered just a bit how desert warriors were supposed to be the most kick-ass thing in the Galaxy when the Galaxy included worlds that might well have looked like Dagobah or worse. It'd be one thing if Paul used orbital weapons and held planets to blackmail, but the implication was that the Fremen in hand to hand combat were his primary means of overwhielming everybody. Dude. C'mere, got a little surprise for you, it's called Hoth and I stocked it full of angry Finns. Now suck it, breeder boy.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-11 08:18 am (UTC):)
You bring the Fremen...
Date: 2002-12-11 08:51 am (UTC)Nyt pitää olla tappamisen meininki!
Flamethrowers, Ski-troops, 'borrowed' tanks and a 20mm 'anti-vehicle rifle' that makes a great sniper weapon against people you REALLY don't like.
Hakkaa päälle, Suomen poika!
no subject
Date: 2002-12-11 10:11 am (UTC)I love you.
...sorry, it just sort of bubbled up out of nowhere.
That's okay. I needed that mental image this morning. Thank you. You've made my day.
FYI, it's currently in the mid fifties here, partly cloudy with a light easterly breeze. According to the crystal ball, it'll drop all the way to the mid forties tonight. But then, California only has two seasons: wet and dry.
-M
(wearing a big, goofy grin)
Fremen vs Finns TONIGHT on Fantasy Deathmatch!
Date: 2002-12-11 01:08 pm (UTC)It definitely has polar ice caps, canonically, because that's one of the water sources. Given that neither the northern icecap nor the palmaries of the south are particularly nearby, this puts the city of Arrakeen, and the sietches of our main characters, in the temperate latitudes.
However, you could have Fremen Snowtroopers training up near the icecaps -- which would learn them about ice, snow, and cold, of course, but wouldn't do a think about bogs. No, for that, the Mahdi packs up a few of the guys and ferries 'em home to Caladan, which isn't as fully realised as a world as Arrakis is, but we know it rains and it's temperate enough for rice, which means rice paddies, which means mud training and time for the Ichwan Bedwine to get over the deep religious awe inspired by the sight water falling from the sky and flowing over the ground.
Also on the Fremens' side is that Dune -- by which I mean the entire ficton -- is not really a world of soldiers and armies. Each Great House of the Landsraad has token forces, yes, but the real military might was always House Corrino's Sardaukar. Remember that Leto's fall in the eyes of Shaddam was that he had a small force within a whisker as good as the Sardaukar -- that and his popularity among the Houses.
No, Dune is primarily a world where interfaction conflicts are primarily decided by assassins, and where some amount of psionics actually works. So, stealthy Suomi on skis supplemented by Bene Gesserit posing as Saami wizards, the whole mess of it on your icebound world, and theeeen House Tuonela would have a leg to stand on. 8-)
-- Lorrie
Re: Fremen vs Finns TONIGHT on Fantasy Deathmatch!
Date: 2002-12-11 05:03 pm (UTC)They're insisting that they're not an ice planet, they're a 'winter world', with forests and everything. But it's still cold as fsck and it's got a hell of an axial tilt and it's at the very edges of the biozone for its system... arrgh, what am I supposed to do with these people now? Other than put them on skis and give them flamethrowers and a deep and abiding love for their tietajas.
Re: Fremen vs Finns TONIGHT on Fantasy Deathmatch!
Date: 2002-12-12 03:19 am (UTC)"So many Fremen... wherever will we bury them all?"
and
"We captured just enough of the planet in which to bury our dead"