How big is a division?

[zute]

I apologize for another lame-ass question, but in the story I'm writing now this actually has relevance. It's the difference between paranoia and reasonable concern.

When you rescue Riordan he tells you that Loghain had turned away 200 Grey Wardens and two dozen divisions of cavalry.  When I looked up division sizes I got utterly enormous numbers like 10,000 for single light infantry division, in the modern army. I'm sure that must be vastly larger than in middle ages terms.

Does anyone have a feel for how many actually people that would be? 

My thanks!

Zute

Comments

[niniane]

Well, yes and no I think.

I mean, I think it's fair to say "yeah, your Warden is special, so what they do is more influential than what a normal human would do"

But I'm not sure that it's unfair to say "game mechanics may let your Warden make decisions that might not make 100% sense in a semi-realistic environment". Just because, as you said, the PC does decide the fate of everything. But in a quasi-realistic world, no one would decide the fate of everything. So assuming that all Warden decisions are 100% the same as a normal political process seems kind of wacky.

[darkrose]

So assuming that all Warden decisions are 100% the same as a normal political process seems kind of wacky.

I'm not saying that at all.

I'm saying that the fact that the Warden is allowed to make the decision at all is completely unrealistic outside of the context of the game, which assumes that you're going to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to play in the first place. If you're arguing that it doesn't make sense for the Landsmeet to accept Alistair as King because the Warden shouldn't be making the decision, you might as well say that there shouldn't be a Blight because the laws of physics say that something the size of the archdemon is can't fly?

[niniane]

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Yes, in that case, we're in total agreement. ;)