Survey teams would be somewhat near these PAAF "pony express stations" either in transit or moving out from the gates with their own portal hound talents.
NB: The Hells Gate universe may have a survey crew or two unaccounted for in the text thus far. That idea will depend on the PAAF policy post 1st contact, and prior to the Arcanian offensive.
I'd expect that many of these survey teams in the over run universes would be watercraft based -- canoes or small flat bottom boat sailing craft a'la Lewis and Clark in North America -- so some of them might be easy to police up, if unwarned.
However, given the overwhelming Arcanian need to push forward to a stopping point like Ft Salby, there will be a long period of time with which these survey outfits and PAAF stations can bug out, take hide positions and organize.
Simply limiting either large mounted group land movements or water movements to the night time, plus hiding under concealment during the day, will kill the ability of the Arcanians to rapidly round up people not wanting to be found.
People who have superior communications to tip off those being searched for of approaching Arcanian patrols.
brnicholas wrote:Given the way chan Baskay and Arthag disappeared from the books after the initial attack on Hell's Gate I don't expect to see them again until Sharonan forces get back to Hell's Gate. The have valuable prisoners to protect so ought to be carefully avoiding contact with Arcanans.
You are right that "leaving enemies to wander around behind you is seldom the best plan" but in that regard chan Baskay and Arthag are among Arcanas smallest problems. There were 23 survey crews within four transits of Hell's Gate when the conclave started to meet (HG Chapter 40) and that number doubtless went up before the attack happened. We don't know how many people that is but a really conservative estimate is 600 and triple or quadruple that would not surprise me. In addition Kinlafia used remounts from PAAF liveries as he traveled, each of those will be small and out of contact but spread over regular intervals for several thousand miles there ought to be a lot of men, if someone gathers them together. Rear area security is going to be a major Arcanan problem.
NicholasHoward T. Map-addict wrote:I would also like to see what chan Baskay and Arthag
are doing.
Especially since it now seems that there are no dragons
available to pursue them. I guess that Arcana's
commanders did not want to risk transport dragons near
where they might be, lest the dragons be shot down.
Even so, leaving enemies to wander around behind you
is seldom the best plan.
HTM, snippet-hungry