Hi! After a wonderful Campaign BR of my fellow clubmate, I got a hint of inspiration to participate in Campaign and write narrative BRs myself.. But I'm not well informed on ranks of Haqqislam army (apart from Amirs) and how soldiers should realistically refer to each other, are there any specific phrases and nicknames in the army.. Without such info I feel like I'm better off joining in as Tunguska, which feels easier to RP as from narrative perspective. So... Any ideas where I can get such info?
The High Command should be able to help you with this specific issue. From my point of view without knowing many of these details, it is not necessary to dig that deep. I did the work-around with creating a sub-group force doing all the stuff and so the narrative keeps their track through the campaign. What I want to say in general: Don't let such things stop you from going with the greatest faction in the Human Sphere. As long as you have fun and feel comfortable with your writing, it will be great.
Hi! This is one of my most common fears when starting a narrative (not gettting names and ranks right), but at the end of the day, Infinity offers a multicultural pot in which you can perfectly work with almost total freedom. For example, I use mostly the troop name to designate a character (Ghulam, Odalisque, Al'Hawa, etc), but when writting in plural I use loose terms like "the troops", "the squad", and so fort. It is my understanding that all of my characters talk to each other in Arabic and Turkish, but they all have a Real-Time translator App on their Geists, to understand characters that would speak another language (for example my Alguaciles and Mobile Brigada who speak in Spanish, Portuguese, English and Russian). But such a tidbit is something to spice the stories up (especially when someone gets isolated and the translator goes off-line). Google is my main source for Arabic terms and such, but I'm not really well versed and stick to what I know and can use. So, just call your guys by their rank, like Lt, Searge, Captain, or whichever you wish and in terms of endearment, just use whatever you feel like and asume the translator is doing it's best for us reading through Mayanet. I hope this helps.
Having written my first battle report for a campaign yesterday, I'll share: I used contemporary land forces ranks in English (since I was writing the report in English, after all), save for al'Hawwas (as they are Navy personnel, I gave them Navy ranks). From the fluff we know the Djnabazan use Navy ranks, too. Keep in mind there might be just as well an uniformed service (same ranks for army / navy), at least in your part of Sword of Allah. I assumed the troops in general would be non-comissioned officers (corporals, sergeants and equivalents), being professional armed forces personnel. I could go with some privates if I had any Line Troops in my list, but since I had not... The commander was the sole actual officer (a lieutenant), but could as well be a ranking NCO or a warrant officer after all (a different story, but in the Avalon Chronicles fanfic / game the main character retired from the CJC as a Chief Warrant Officer - that's as high as you can get without becoming an actual [comissioned] officer. This indicates long service and loads of experience: while a 2nd Lieutenant technically would outrank him, it would be a very dumb move from a wet-behind-his-ears Academy graduate to boss around a senior NCO / WO, and any field officer worth his salt would listen carefully to what such NCO / WO has to say, even if he'd later choose to not act upon such advice!). As for personal names, I opened up a Wikipedia list on Turkish surnames (as I was writing a report for QK) and started picking them in alphabetical order - first to be described had a name starting with A, the second one with B, etc (I choose names from a given letter's list accoridng to my fancy :P). Since I went with a military-styled After Action Report, given / first names weren't necessary.
