"I do not."

"In that case I can get back to you later with a list, though you'll probably want to get some additional recommendations from someone more familiar with the people who came up with the army."

"I will see if Ser Tirabade has advice if ever she has a moment."

Nod. "Before I depart, you mentioned earlier that you feel inadequately catechized — is there anything you urgently need an explanation of?"

"If Commune training is inaccessible no one thing floats to the top most obviously."

He nods. "If you think of anything, don't hesitate to ask."

The next of his advisors to arrive is Baroness Gaunther, his head general and advisor on military strategy. She's an aasimar woman, with golden eyes, golden lips, and a golden halo shining around her head, and she's dressed more like an adventurer than like one of the aristocrats at Count Arendae's parties. 

"Select, soon to be Knight-Commander. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"You as well. Can you tell me about your military experience?"

"Of course. I joined our military after being blessed with the ability to cast Endure Elements, which I took as a sign that my powers were needed in our army rather than on the home front..."

She relates her military history. In addition to its forts along the Wardstone line, Mendev has a mobile force that travels around to respond to incidents better suited for an army than a strike team, and her experience was nearly all with the mobile force rather than at a fort. She discovered that she had a daily trick a bit like an Augury, but without requiring incense, and put it to work in operational planning. (It's not nearly as useful as it sounds; learning "Woe" has certainly saved her men's lives multiple times over, but "Weal and Woe" can mean any number of things.)

She's apparently older than she looks; she was promoted to captain near the start of the Fourth Crusade, and made a general after one of Mendev's previous generals was killed irretrievably driving off demons during the siege of Fort Suma. (To hear her tell it, Blai may get the impression that while green recruits would be much more likely to die at a Chelish fort than somewhere with positive channels, experienced members of Mendev's military are prime targets for demonic assassinations to a much greater extent than is true along the Chelish border.)

And what can she tell him about the unit discipline of the forces and how they'll take to a Lastwall-handbook-based system and what it takes to keep their morale up?

Many of the unit discipline issues are the sort typical of just about any army — drunkenness on duty, sloppiness about gear maintenance, that sort of thing. Gaunther doesn't know enough about Blai's background to make the comparison explicitly, but compared to what Blai would have seen at his fort, there's somewhat more desertion; in most cases, it takes the form of Mendevian soldiers attempting to just go back home, and desertion in the heat of battle is actually rarer. There's significantly less interpersonal conflict than just about any Chelish fort, and some issues that Mendev essentially never has to deal with. The Queen in her mercy generally prefers to handle desertion outside the heat of battle (and that didn't involve defection to the demons) by sending the deserter to serve with the Condemned. It is possible desertion will be more of a concern than usual in the early days of the Crusade; the Queen wasn't sure how large of a force she'd need in Kenabres, and pulled some people away from their forts and (in the case of clerics) occasionally their villages to join the mobile force. ("Though I do expect it to stop being an issue once we've crossed the Wardstone barrier. Even cowards have enough sense not to run off into the middle of the Wound alone.")

In terms of morale, the Mendevian army wants reliable pay, enough to eat, frequent victories, decent weather, commanders who can act like they care about them, and the prospect of ever seeing their families. She also recommends against attempting to entirely prevent drinking or gambling or whoring, the way paladins are sometimes tempted to.

She needs an explanation of what the Lastwall handbook actually says, but when she hears it she purses her lips into a frown. "I expect this to be... controversial, Select. These rules may serve Lastwall well, but Mendev's needs are not the same as theirs."

and just checking, as a for-instance, how would a commander go about acting like he cared about them. theoretically

"I'm familiar with it and it is written down, which I was told Mendevian law is not. If there are specific well-scoped changes you have in mind I can entertain them."

"I think the men would be willing to accept the list of prohibited conduct, but the punishments seem rather harsh, and don't allow much room for discretion. The punishments for drunkenness, for example, or corruption, or rape of the enemy — which is Evil, of course, I'm not denying that, but would you really have me put a veteran to death the first time he takes advantage of a captured cultist?"

"...that was my plan, yes."

"Surely a lesser punishment would be sufficient to discourage him from reoffending, while enabling him to put his talents to use fighting for Mendev and giving him the opportunity to redeem himself through service to the Crusade."

"...I suppose in that particular case we could castrate him."

"That does sound easier for Mendev to bear," she says, in the tone of someone who'd been hoping he would suggest sentencing them all to twenty lashes and a talk with a Sarenrite who could set them straight.

"I understand there's a penal legion and if it is sex-segregated, has no contact with prisoners, is much more closely supervised, doesn't receive an alcohol ration, doesn't handle its own funds, etcetera, I could see using it for many cases?"

"It is not sex-segregated, though it's rare for women to be sentenced to it. Within the mobile army, they're closely supervised, never put in charge of supervising prisoners, and don't handle their own funds, though they do currently receive a limited alcohol ration after victories. My understanding is that some of those policies were implemented differently in Kenabres."

"Differently how?"

"It wasn't feasible to supervise them as closely while operating within a city, or to limit their access to alcohol as thoroughly, though I believe this was taken into account when determining which members of the Condemned could safely be stationed here."

"I see. I think I can still use the penal legion for first offenses as long as there is not some rampant child-endangerment going on with the lack of sex segregation but it does seem questionable to post them in a city given any choice in the matter."

"No more so than elsewhere in the army. Even in the penal battalions most men have the sense to stick to the camp followers." ...Is he going to want to ban men in the penal battalions from seeing the camp followers?

"Is there unbeknownst to me some way to avoid endangering children while maintaining camp followers of that nature?"

"There's a Sarenrite lay order that takes the children in." (Mendev has unusually many women's lay orders, what with the sheer number of men fighting and often dying at the Worldwound.) "They'd take the child of a lady soldier too, in principle, but the pregnancy would interfere with her duties."