How would these 60 warrior females react to their 17-year old male master?

[Warsa12]

How exactly would this sisterhood organization of 60 17-year old female warriors react to this male master of theirs that they were raised and trained to protect for the rest of their lives? By the way, the 60 17-year old male master is not related by blood to his 60 female warriors.


The male master is a 17-year old male who is from a rich powerful family(his mom, his dad, and his siblings). The rich powerful family is the one that gave him the 60 warrior females. The rich powerful family and their clans and relatives are all fierce warriors so the entire clan has a warrior culture where every member is expected to be a warrior of decent performance.


The sisterhood organization are brave warriors who are 60 of the best warriors in the entire world. The 60 female warriors have protected the rich powerful family for their whole lives. The 60 female warriors were raised and trained to be devoted to and protect the 17-year old male master for their whole lives.


So the 60 female warriors always follow the 17-year old male master wherever he goes and they are fanatical in following him even if there are times he doesn't want them to.

Also, the 60 17-year old female warriors have the same warrior clothings and the same non-combat clothings.


But in contrast to the 60 female warriors, the 17-year old male master is cowardly. He can't stand up for himself. He is also afraid of any confrontation and physical fights and avoids all of them as much as possible. He is also bad at martial arts and other warrior training. As a result of all of these, the 17-year old male master failed to be a warrior. He is also scared of every member of his entire sisterhood organization.


So how would the 60 female warriors react to their 17-year old male master?

 

[The Judge]

What makes you think they would all respond the same way? Despite their training, unless they are clones or have been brain-wiped or some such, they will all remain individuals, with secret fears/hopes/desires etc, so their reactions are likely to be diverse. Much would also depend on the penalties they might incur were they to express their opinions of his conduct.

But...

I personally find the whole concept unbelievable -- if these women have aged at the same rate the boy has, who was looking after him until they were good enough to be bodyguards? Why aren't some of those previous guards still around? Teenage girls have a lot going for them, but they might not yet have even achieved their full height and most certainly not their full physical and mental abilities -- it's ludicrous for a powerful organisation to put the life of an important child in the hands of other unproved not-yet-adults.

I recall from your earlier thread about warrior assassins' clothing that you might not have considered certain practicalities in your enthusiasm for your plot and story, so it might be an idea to question the underlying basis of it a little more if you want it to sound believable. If you're not interested in that aspect, though, then there's no reason to worry about whatever reaction you do give these women, whether it's likely or otherwise.

 

[Swank]

This just sounds like the terrible set-up of a comedic anime.

Answer is: Whatever they would do in a comedic anime.

 

[Montero]

You could run the range from slave collars that enforce obedience, to high pay. Their reaction will vary depending on which and of course with individual. They may treat it as a job of work. There are lots of people in the real world who have to work for a boss they think a bit of a moron for various reasons, from not being as competent as the underling, to having an unpleasant personality.
However I am afraid that I'm not exactly keen on your scenario, it seems a bit forced and with the practical details not thought through and why all women? I'm absolutely all for including women as warriors, but it all seems a bit tacky to make them all women, has shades of skimpy armor and sexism to it.

 

[paranoid marvin]

If they were 'raised' to serve and 'given' to him, they sound like slaves?
It sounss like a female version of the Unsullied from GoT.

 

[Biskit]

Your scenario seems unbelievable and not well thought-out, and does not show any good hooks for where your story is going to hang.

I have the same problem with this as @The Judge - a bunch of teenage guards who may not yet have reached their physical and mental peak with no older/more experienced members to guide them.

I suppose my next problem is "The rich powerful family is the one that gave him the 60 warrior females." It sounds like a badly considered birthday present. I can hear the "master" complaining, "Aw, Dad, I wanted a battle-fleet not a bunch of girls with swords." (It also puts me in mind of those animal welfare ads when I was a kid - a kitten is for life, not just Christmas.)

Why 60? Given the repetition, that seems to be important, but realistically, that shouldn't matter because a story centered around 60 characters is going to be mind-bending, so from a story-telling perspective, we only need to know about a very small number of these guards, what they do, and how their feelings about their role vary.

What happens in ten years time when your 60 guards (assuming all survived) are at or just passing their physical peak? Or twenty years when they will be on the way down, and perhaps ought to be replaced with the next generation? And what happened for the prior ten years? Who guarded the "master" from age 7-17?

My next problem with 60 is what happens when one dies or is so sick or injured that they no longer serve, either temporarily or permanently. Is a new one appointed? Do they stick with 59? Is there a reserve-force of age-matched guards waiting in the sidelines to step up as needed? What if a dozen are incapacitated? Who fills in the gap? Your description makes it sound like the guards will be routinely fending off attacks, rather than being ceremonial which would imply injuries and fatalities. Furthermore, your setting sounds pseudo-medieval so guards being incapacitated might be nothing to do with combat - dysentery and typhus can be devastating. (Literally just watched a documentary on the latest historical research on the Spanish Armada of 1588 - Spanish losses far outweighed English losses during the sea battles, but the English fleet was hit with typhus on return to port which brought the English losses up to a par with the Spanish.)

You say the 60 are always hanging around with the master, but that does not make practical sense. Surely they have to sleep sometime, but not all at the same time otherwise who's doing the guarding? So, are these 60 guards broken up into shifts? 30 each doing 12 hours on/12 hours off? Or 20 each doing an 8/16 split? Does their attitude to the master depend on whether they're on day-shift or night? How and when do they find time for training to maintain their combat skills?

What's the hierarchy? People, especially military, like hierarchies. You've got 60 guards, but no mention of who is in command, who does the admin, etc. You've said "a warrior culture where every member is expected to be a warrior of decent performance", which implies that some will be better than others, so do the best ones have a position closest to the master as the last line of defence? If so, who decides? 60 people as one amorphous crowd is a mess.

Overall, you've got a scenario that is ripe for plot ebb and flow, tension and character interaction, but have reduced it down to a simplistic "the guards" and "the master", so you're throwing away a vast story-telling potential.

(I have an opening for a story which has a guard force of cloned women defending a temple, and one annoying arse of a prisoner who has to be escorted elsewhere. I picked three guards for the journey, all notionally the same but with varying competence and skills, varying attitudes to the prisoner, and varying attitudes to the society that created them. Of the four chosen characters, only the arse of a prisoner and one guard are the major characters. The other hundred plus guards are there, in the background, so not part of the story. I forget about them and concentrate on the shifting relationship between the four, but focused on two.)

 

[Pyan]

Sorry, it sounds like a John Norman 'plot', with a touch of Mary Sue about it, or maybe a somewhat warped variant on the Sacred Band of Thebes.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Some good points by Biskit and others. Sixty seems unrealistic - an army of 5,000 maybe, or a bodyguard of 2 or 3 perhaps. But sixty is impracticle - too many to take with you if you go somewhere - how would you feed and quarter them? And too few to deal with a sizeable opponent.

From an author's point of view, you are also making a bit of a rod for your own back, because as well as tailing after the protagonist, they're also hanging on you the writer.

Seeing as there are 'only'sixty, do you feel tge need to name them, or describe what they are individually doing? Do you decide on just naming a couple, and have the rest remain anonymous? If you have the same few featuring every time, what are the others doing.

THere's a reason why Robin Hood only had a tight band of Merrie Men, why Blake only had Seven and why Star Trek's away teams were limites in number.

 

[Toby Frost]

It sounss like a female version of the Unsullied from GoT.

I was thinking more of the army of leather bondage ladies from Terry Goodkind who followed the hero around for entirely valid reasons.

I'm afraid I just can't buy into the concept. Maybe, if the boy was some kind of sleazy absolute monarch, like Joffrey from A Game of Thrones, he might decide to have a bodyguard made up of adoring ninja hotties, but that plan would hardly guarantee their loyalty or adoration, and they or some Tywin Lannister-type advisor would probably change the situation quickly. While women certainly can fight, I doubt that the 60 best warriors will all be women, and certainly not 17-year-olds. As it stands, it sounds iffy.

 

[Pyan]

a bodyguard made up of adoring ninja hotties,

Please, please give Space Captain Smith one of these in the next book, @Toby Frost...

 

[Hyacinthoides non-scripta]

Unless you stand to make this a comedy, I would be asking why sixty female warriors would pay fealty to a teenage boy who can’t stand his own ground. What would keep them faithful to their ‘master’ when they could easily look after themselves? It doesn’t make sense to me. It runs the risk of being super sexist too.

 

[Toby Frost]

Please, please give Space Captain Smith one of these in the next book, @Toby Frost...

No promises, but if I form an indie band "The Adoring Ninja Hotties" might be their name.

 

[KGeo777]

For some reason this came to mind:

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Look, it's your fantasy! Do whatever you like with it! Not much point asking us.