Ciphers from the Society

Right, setting aside the discussion of the difference between a mercenary soldier and some pricks with blades who take coin (we'll have a chat, Chet)---

---this lot are just interested in slotting as many people as they can? No big goals involving territorial domination, no supernatural backers or motivations, no concerns about them being used as a proxy force by the Duke, no indicators that this Lord Stone bloke is the world's smartest golem?

Sod me, I might actually be able to do some good here.

I'm genuinely curious on the difference between mercenary and "pricks with blades who take coin".

Considering my understanding of mercenary is someone who makes money at the expense of ethics, or is a professional soldier who is hired to fight in a war that isn't theirs.

This got lengthier than I meant for it to be so rest of you lot can feel free to skip over this.

Anyway, to my mind, it's always the latter. I got my start back home in his Majesty the Sultan's Armed Forces, went out to a few of the petty rulers in the dunes after I left his service, now I'm out here with the Fleet. Where I come from, it's more freelancers with experience in one standing service or another signing on with a different standing force or heading up security operations, close protection details, what have you---if it leverages your military or warfighting experience, it's mercenary soldiering. And the best of the lot are indistinguishable in their performance and conduct from any native-born officer or NCO in their current service or the service of the country they're working in.

Mind you, that's out in the dunes. There's a lot less of the war band with a dramatic name (love the creativity behind those, mind you) operating as an independent entity out there than there is here, and I'm not as familiar with the mercenary community and its vagaries here since I only just signed on with the Fleet three months ago. Do the Blood Spirits' members have ranks and billet in the Kormyrian military? Search me, but there seems to be a bunch of us old-school freelancers in Koymyrian service. My XO's a dispossessed Quinarian, we've got people from Coast Haven and elsewhere in our ranks. Would love to see a breakdown of the demographics some day.

Anyway, the thing is people like to call anyone who does stabby or shooty things for pay a mercenary when that's not the case. You get a piece of gold for roughing someone up in a back alley, you're not a mercenary soldier, you're a thug. You take pay to bring an outlaw in, you're a bounty hunter. You get a coin purse for seeking out and killing someone, you're an assassin. So what this Society lot sounds like they're after are assassins. Not mercenary soldiers.

Just my two silvers and a whole bunch of professional pride.

So basically they aren't technically mercenaries unless they're working as what is basically freelance soldiers? Privatized military operations?

Yeah, 'zactly, just not necessarily for private enterprises (though those blokes are definitely out there), more the whole 'freelance soldier' thing. I'm a public servant as a sailor in the Royal Navy, but I am still a long, long way from home. My old home, at least.

That's too complicated an answer.

A mercenary fights combatants for money. That's it.

Thugs rough up non combatants because they didn't pay their debt, mercenaries expect armed resistance.

You don't need to be a soldier, you need to want to eat and are willing to kill for it.