A humble lore introduction to the Marine royale and comments on Gallic society | OORP

[Lanakov]

Hello Disco,

Yes ! It is I, your friendly ultranationalistic Frenchman.
Following several interesting questions and discussions from various members of this esteemed community, I realised that there really wasn't much in regards to established lore about Gallia's finer points. We know it's essentially an absolute monarchy with ministries and what you'd expect in regards to how it enforces its authority on its people, although various infocards tell us they are generally well taken care of and it's usually a nice place to be a citizen, if you're not too anxious about civil rights.

I'm writing this to shed some light on stuff we don't know about, purely because it's just not written anywhere in the mod (to my knowledge). I don't mean to erase what my GRN predecessors have done in regards to lore (surrounding the aristocracy, for instance), but I can't say I'm willing to simply follow up on it. For one thing, it's all very dense, seriously outdated and most of it applies to people who've long left Disco.
So my point here is to provide people with broad strokes about Gallic lore, including its navy, based on my understanding of it, along with my knowledge of the source material. Being part of the French navy and essentially nuts about French history makes me feel comfortable about this stuff, and Disco has done a great job of making Gallia an authentic love letter to French culture, its roots, its old issues (French society is very much divided to this day) and its customs. I will elaborate on that to give people a general idea of how things are organised inRP, so they can ground their stories in something and not have to make stuff up all the time.

Do note that these are only recommendations and suggestions. I don't want to usurp SLIS in any way and this is certainly not the point of this thread. I'm offering lore help, not imposing it on others.

I plan for this post to be iterative. I'll fill it as I go, and will cover various aspects of French culture relevant to Gallia in due time. If there's something you want to know or are unsure about, do ask me and I'll adjust the post accordingly. Hope this post will help people interested in Gallia to create interesting stories and generally have a good time interacting with us. Thanks for reading !

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If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.

[Lanakov]

PART 1 : COMMENTS ON THE MARINE AND NOBILITY

As some of you might have noticed, the MRG ranks are a close approximation of those currently in use in the Marine nationale. I've simplified and gameified them for obvious reasons, but the general gist of it the same. For this part, we'll work with the assumption that the MRG has kept the tried and true systems of the Marine nationale... Which, itself, isn't very far from the venerable Marine royale of Louis XIV. Yes, we're a bunch of traditionalists.

Which is a good opener. As it states on the infocard, the GRN is a force of tradition. Its officers are conservative, they are protective of Gallic customs and revere their beloved King. That means they WILL look down on things like lack of etiquette, perceived lack of education, disrespect towards figures of authority and generally anyone who lacks merit and is content to do petty work for petty reasons. In short : peasants. Merit has a very strong place in Gallia : work hard enough and you will rise above your station and bask in the King's glorious light. Peasants typically don't work hard enough or for wrong reasons.
Contrarily to what you may think, not every officer of the GRN is part of nobility. In the MRG, I'd say a little over a third of the officers are nobles of various degrees : nobility isn't a prerequisite to making it to a good position in the military. Naturally, it helps : commoners WILL have a harder time securing enough influence to rise, but no position is closed to them. Being a commoner is NOT being a peasant. It's still not as good as being a noble. OBVIOUSLY.
I've chosen to integrate nobility titles as exceptional rewards for particularly deserving officers. This is a bit of a departure from French aristocracy customs, as generals and admirals didn't have the power to knight someone. But they could make recommendations to elevate someone based on their merit, and that's how I made a "simple" chief of staff like Chanteloup, herself a noble of minor stature, have the power to grant titles to other characters. She just doesn't do it directly.

Here are, in order of lessening importance, the titles of nobility used in Old France :
Duc.
Marquis.
Comte.
Vicomte.
Baron.
Banneret.
Chevalier.

I plan to use it as a parallel hierarchy for the members of the MRG. Aristocracy is a wonderful thing : although you can't be a lieutenant and a general at once, you can very much be both a chevalier and a comte. It stacks up and that's how you end up with ridiculously pompous lists attached to your name. Thunderer has mastered this art to perfection, as any of you who met his MRG character can attest.

SYNTAX GUIDELINES

A noble is always a [title] of something. With the exception of Chevalier, this something has to be a place.
For the sake of convenience, I suggest NOT using the names of planets, stations or systems. Rising up and claiming that you essentially own Planet Nevers because your bio says so would be a little silly and powergamey. BUT ! I have a solution. France has a very... French custom encapsulated in one word : lieu-dit. A lieu-dit, says wiki, is a French toponymic term for a small geographical area bearing a traditional name. Lieux-dits are generally steeped in history and have a direct connection to their geographical location : just type lieu-dit list [system or planet name] and you'll find plenty of options to lay claim to if you want to be lower-class nobility ! To use Thund's example, he made up the Plateau des Coucous, which is about as French a lieu-dit as it gets, and works great as a title while not stringing you up to an actual ingame location.

For higher-class nobility, you can lay claim to entire villages, towns and even cities ! Seeing as how Freelancer works, I recommend looking into districts or smaller cities surrounding a planet or station's namesake. To pick an example very close to home : Dijon station. Next to real-life Dijon is a small residential area called Marsannay (which is close to where Romanée-Conti wine is produced btw). There is zero risk that anyone else has already laid claim to the title of Marquis de Marsannay. Your character now has a cool sounding title that relates him directly to Dijon station and Burgundy in general. Easy, isn't it ?

Chevalier is a little different. It means "knight", and although you can absolutely be a knight of some place, you can also be a knight of something. And the thing here is that you can be a knight of just about anything you like. Yvain was the Knight of the Lion. There were knights of the Golden Fleece, of the Holy Cross, of Saint-George... It can be an animal, an object, a saint, a mythological concept, a vow... There are many, many possibilities, so go nuts.

As a final remark with naming your noble character : French aristocrats usually have two surnames, generally to reflect their holdings. Since aristocrats generally marry one another, they associate their titles : would be a shame to miss on that ! Consider my character, Isabelle Montlaville de Chanteloup. Montlaville is the father's surname, a commoner ; de Chanteloup is the mother's. The family name comes from a small village in Île-de-France called Chanteloup, that is essentially a family holding. And voilà !

The MRG roster has many good examples of accurate names of this sort. But if you have any doubt, never hesitate to ask me.

Finally, inheritance : as medieval historians know, this is an IMPOSSIBLY complicated matter, that has changed repeatedly over the course of history and is a nightmare to keep track of. So I'm suggesting the use of post-1848 inheritance law : on death, the titles of an individual are shared equally among his offspring, and that's it. Can generate interesting RP friction and is NOT a useless mess to keep track of.

That's about all I can think of at present. Next part will be about life on a warship : hierarchy, daily routine, work organisation, protocols and whatnot. Stay tuned, and please post your suggestions below.

Thanks for reading !

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Feedback, insults, marriage proposals and declarations of fealty

If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.

[Lanakov]

PART 2 : THE RUNNINGS OF A WARSHIP IN THE MARINE

Like I said in the introduction of part 1, I'm assuming that the MRG stayed faithful to proven old Earth practices and am only making stuff up to adjust current practices to how I imagine a Freelancer warship would be run. Using a foundation grounded in reality instead of something purely made up helps it being coherent and easier to navigate, too, I find. Anyhow, let's get to things !

COMMAND RANKS

Officer ranks generally determine the class of ship they're commanding. It's not particularly different than other navies, in Disco lore or RL. But just to clarify, here is a quick list. A reminder before we start : all capitaine de... ranks in the French navy bear the title of "Commandant". We use the same term for an officer in command of a ship : "commandant" means "commanding". "Capitaine' is only a rank title, not a function. Unlike Commandant, which is both.

I know it gets tricky, but just remember that. Your ship's boss is called commandant, not captain/capitaine. No matter their rank.

- Battleships are generally commanded by capitaines de vaisseau and seconded by capitaines de frégate or de corvette. In special cases, they can be commanded by an Amiral, who would then be in charge of the whole accompanying battlegroup.

- Cruisers and destroyers are generally commanded by either capitaines de frégate or corvette, seconded by CCs or lieutenants de vaisseau (called capitaine).

- Gunboats are commanded by enseignes or lieutenants de vaisseau, and can be seconded by any rank.

- Fighters and bombers can be flown by any rank, but it starts getting weird at capitaine de corvette. CCs are aging, very qualified officers and managers. Having them in single or two-seaters makes little sense and would be a bit of a waste of potential. However, it is very sensible to have them in the rear, aboard command & control ships to coordinate a strike wing. Similarily, because Maîtres Principaux and Majors would generally be older and more experienced than the Enseignes (these being young officers), strike leaders would be more likely MPs and Majors rather than Enseignes despite those being one tier up in the hierarchy. French military is very keen on rusticity (read on, I explain that below), and that means leaning on to people who simply know better than you, regardless of ranks. Not always applied, sadly, some being, as ever, stuck up in rules and traditions and whatnot.

DIVISION OF TASKS AND GENERAL ATMOSPHERE ON A SHIP

There is a very old tradition in the French navy, encapsulated in a barely translatable concept : rusticité. Rusticity in English, and in a general sense, the original meaning is essentially similar. It defines a certain harshness typically associated with the rural lifestyle. In French military linguo, rusticité is a synonym of adaptability, endurance and resourcefulness. A rustic soldier does not complain, makes do with what he's given and finds ways to accomplish his or her mission no matter how dreadful the conditions or how faulty his equipment can be.

Rusticité is demanded of every French serviceman and woman, primarily because of discipline purposes... But also for a sadder reason : the defense budgets have been historically barely sufficient to keep the engines running while having replacement programs every so often to keep the military in the global loop. The French military is one of the very few capable forces in the EU, and is easily the one who is most often projected, and at the greatest distances. This results in a great stress placed on sometimes aging equipment and a great diversity of theatres of operation. In this light, adaptability at the individual level is an absolute necessity. I suggest you read up on the Ponant hostage rescue operation in 2008 : a great example of how bad things can get in the middle of an operation, yet the military will always find a way to make do and accomplish its goal.

Why such a prolonged parenthesis, you rambling ultranationalistic fool ? asks you, the reader, not without reason.
I'd say that rusticité has become, over decades, so deeply engrained in French doctrine, and deemed so valuable and paramount to the success of its military operations, that it'd certainly have been made a long-standing tradition and a doctrinal specialisation by the time the Gallia sleeper ships pisses off to the stars. It seems very sensible to me that the GRN would still demand utter rusticity from its troops, and I imagine that the triumphs of high technology that are Gallic ships are just as susceptible to silly breakdowns of various sorts, much like the technological jewels modern navies enjoy to this day.

And thus, I like to imagine that there's always something to fix aboard, say, a Valor, and that its entire crew is taught to know it inside and out and trained to perform at least basic maintenance and repair. All of this to tell you that, unlike the US navy and its many depictions, the French navy is not made up of super-specialised crew members, each uber proficient in his or her domain. Aboard a French frigate, which generally have low crew, everyone is expected to perform two, three, four jobs at once. Administration, mechanical, electronical, day-to-day operations, navigation, you name it. It's a stress on crew members, but it results in super-adaptable, knowledgeable and professional sailors, who can do wonders with less than optimal hardware. It's often joked that if the French navy had half the budget of that of the US navy, it'd rule over the seven seas undisputed.

This is why I would suggest NOT compiling a long, super exhaustive list of dedicated crew in your stories. I will list the main command positions aboard a ship and their usual nicknames, useful for greater immersion. You'll notice there aren't many ; you should now understand why, in light of the rusticité concept I've been describing and that I like to think has carried over from Marine Nationale to Marine Royale.

- Commandant : that's the ship's boss. Affectionally called "Pacha", "le vieux" (the old man) or "le chef". Supervises everything, and I do mean everything. Guns, engines, navigation, food, crew rotation, paint, ceremonial... Which is why he does nothing personally. He just can't, by definition : he has a hand in and is supposed to know a bit about everything, but if he does his job well, never needs to do anything himself.

- Second : That's the ship's XO. He sees to the Pacha's orders being carried out. Very often, the Second has a speciality, which is his secondary role. Mechanic, gunnery, navigation... Unlike the Pacha, the XO needs to perform a specific task directly, and that task depends upon his speciality.

- Chef mécano : chief engineer. In charge of propulsion and power generation, those being the most stressed systems during day to day operations. Generally an officer.

- Chef artilleur : chief of guns. Not so important in RL Marine because of the massive use of missiles everywhere, but certainly more important in Disco. The missile specialist is called "missilier". Literally, missile man.

- Chef manoeuvre, or navigateur : chief of navigation. Makes sure the ship goes where it should.

- Chef opérations, or chef ops : oversees the military operation part of the day-to-day running. What is the situation of the areas crossed by the ship, the level of danger, how ready and alert must the ship be... At the forefront of combat operations. Reports directly to the Pacha. Works from the Central Opérations, which is the brain of the ship and a such, a vital part of the ship (and also of access only allowed to the Pacha and anyone who works specifically in it : the rest of the crew cannot enter it).

- Capitaine d'armes, or Bidel (affectionate nickname which comes from the name of a famous circus company) : chief of discipline and marines. He's in charge of making sure that the crew does its job and respects the rules, and is the commander of the resident infantry force. His office is named BSC : bureau de service courant (literally, office of day-to-day service), and nicknamed la Bidellerie.

- Chef cuistot : the chef (as in, English chef). EXTREMELY respected. Has the morale of the entire crew (and thus, the success of the mission) in his hands. Yes, the French navy is about as fanatically serious regarding food as you would expect. I see no reason why the GRN would be any different.

Again, these are primary functions, specialities of crew leaders who ARE expected to perform a great many other tasks. Although I imagine Valors to be large enough to feature all of these at any given time, it's a rarity aboard Marine nationale frigates. In which case, a chef mécano may do some of the job of the chef artilleur, for instance, or the cook may also be the capitaine d'armes, and so forth. Don't hesitate to take advantage of that when writing your character's bio : it lets your character have a variety of roles (and thus, of skillsets) and engage in various actions while being coherent and perfectly in line regarding what's expected of him/her. It's hard enough to come up with interesting characters while limiting them to one job : in the Marine Royale, you don't have to ! Actually, they HAVE to not be ultra specialised. Perfect for development and variety.

And that's it for now ! I've covered what I had in mind. There's likely a lot I've left aside, either because I can't think of it now or just because it just wouldn't be very interesting or relevant to Disco and writing stories about internet spaceships. Either way, if I've left something out about this topic that you'd like me to cover a little more, feel free to ask me.

Cheers !

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Feedback, insults, marriage proposals and declarations of fealty

If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.

[Lanakov]

RESERVED FOR PART 3 !!!

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Feedback, insults, marriage proposals and declarations of fealty

If everyone was a bit more like Lanakov, the entire world would be more positive. Including pregnancy tests.