Ramblings from the author

At some point Jeff (the gm of the game that I'm playing Lonnie in) started to get into a conversation about the difference between a soldier and a warrior. Since it was past 1 am after a long day at work, I wan't quite coherant, but I've been mulling over my ideas on the differences of the two since then. This is in no way, shape or form a nice neat disertation, but rather my attempt at "verbalizing" my ideas. My brain is a messy place to live in, you don't want to tred there without full hazmat gear and serious artillery. There's some days I scare myself. But on to the meat of the matter.

To me a soldier is an individual who is trained to work with other similar individuals so that they operate together as a deadly unit. They work best when together, but are capable of working individually. Regardless of what they fight for, they are professionals who may not take pride in the destruction of war, take pride in their skills. In my eyes a good soldier will function within his unit to achieve whatever goal has been set with as little casualties on his side as possible along with a minimum of harm done to civilians.

This isn't to say that warriors aren't professionals, they are, they just have a different focus than the soldier. Warriors tend to train as individuals and generally work best in small units if they have to work with others. If you have large numbers of warriors as an army, they will not be as effective as an army of soldiers due to the fact they lack the "team" mentality as is usually demonstrated by well trained soldiers.

I think the best example of "warriors" as opposed to soldiers can be seen in the works of Homer. While the Greeks did gather an army of sorts, it was one composed primarily of warriors each looking out for his own glory in battle, rather than achieving the overall goal.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I know this is still totally muddled, but it's a beginning of how I see the difference between the two.

Comments would be greatly appreciated.