The-tyrant-philosophers/Tunly
Tunly is a Cohort-Monitor of the Landwards Battalion who appears in a single scene in House of Open Wounds, set during a night celebration in the conjoined Forthright-Landwards camp. He is a drunk, confrontational petty officer who stops the Forthright orderly Masty in the dark, demands papers and an excursion permit, shoves him, and drags him to the duty tent insisting on a flogging. The excursion-permit regime he invokes is a Landwards administrative construct with no jurisdiction over a Forthright man walking within the shared camp, and the duty officer, Cohort-Inquirer Megget, overrules the charge outright while delivering a flat rebuke. Tunly's significance to the novel is structural rather than personal: he embodies the friction between allied units operating under incompatible internal regulations, and his small act of bureaucratic overreach produces a minor injustice-a six-stroke flogging issued purely to placate a stubborn monitor-that the novel leaves unresolved.
He never reappears. His conduct is neither formally addressed nor punished; the scene simply ends with Ollery promising to have documentation issued so that the Landwards "don't get fresh again," a dry line that frames Tunly's entire arc as a one-off irritation in the machinery of military cohabitation. He is the face of a parochial, jurisdictional mentality the book treats as both absurd and corrosive.
Character
Personality
Tunly is belligerent, drunk, and petty. He stops a stranger in the dark not to ask a question but to demand compliance, then escalates immediately from verbal confrontation to physical force, shoving Masty and dragging him bodily toward the duty tent - ch 23. Even after the duty officer has declared the charge void and the offender a foreign soldier outside Tunly's authority, he presses for a flogging with enough persistence that Megget concedes six strokes "for malingering or something" purely to get rid of him - ch 23. His temperament is that of a small man exercising a small authority with disproportionate conviction, unable to let go of a rule once he has decided it applies.
Beliefs & Motivations
Tunly operates from an unexamined belief that the Landwards' internal excursion-permit regime extends to everyone present in the conjoined camp, regardless of whose battalion they belong to - ch 23. His motivation in the scene is territorial: he wants to enforce a boundary of control and is unwilling to accept that a Forthright orderly simply walking through the shared grounds owes him nothing. The flogging he demands is less about justice than about the principle that someone should be punished for ignoring his authority - ch 23.
Affiliations
- Landwards - cohort-monitor
History
House of Open Wounds
Tunly is a Cohort-Monitor attached to the Landwards Battalion, and his only appearance in the book comes during a night walkabout scene set in the conjoined Forthright Battalion / Landwards Battalion camp, during a general celebration involving rummell rations and grog - ch 23. He is drunk when he encounters Masty in the dark, a Bracite orderly who belongs to the Forthright detachment but is physically present in the shared camp during the festivities. Tunly stops Masty, demands his papers and an "excursion permit," shoves him, and drags him bodily to the duty tent, where he insists on a flogging for the perceived offence - ch 23. The excursion-permit regime he invokes is, as the duty officer subsequently points out, a Landwards invention with no jurisdiction over a Forthright man walking within the conjoined camp - ch 23.
Cohort-Inquirer Megget, serving as duty officer, examines Masty's papers and immediately overrules Tunly's charge, telling him flatly: "You, Tunly. You are the prick," and adding, "He's not one of ours" - ch 23. Megget identifies Masty as a Forthright man and notes that the permit Tunly is enforcing is a Landwards construct that does not apply to him. Although Megget refuses to write Masty up as a thief, he concedes six strokes "for malingering or something" purely to satisfy Tunly's insistence, and Masty is flogged accordingly - ch 23. Nothing further resolves Tunly's conduct or its consequences within the book; the scene simply ends with Masty returning to the hospital department and Ollery saying he will ask Prassel to issue documentation so the Landwards "don't get fresh again" - ch 23.
Relationships
- Masty - Tunly encounters Masty during the night festivities and treats him as a trespasser subject to Landwards discipline, demanding papers and an excursion permit before resorting to physical force - ch 23. The encounter is entirely one-sided: Masty is a prisoner of the situation, and the interaction produces a flogging Masty does not deserve. Ollery's later promise to obtain documentation "so the Landwards don't get fresh again" implies that Tunly's behaviour was not an isolated act but a recurring pattern of jurisdictional bullying directed at Forthright personnel - ch 23.
- Cohort-Inquirer Megget - Megget, serving as duty officer, is the only figure who directly overrules Tunly, doing so with contempt rather than formality - ch 23. The relationship is purely hierarchical and adversarial: Megget holds the authority to end the affair, and Tunly's authority evaporates the moment it does. There is no suggestion of a prior acquaintance or a continuing conflict beyond this single night.
- Landwards Battalion - Tunly is a Monitor of the Landwards, and the excursion-permit system he enforces is an invention of that battalion, carrying no legal weight over soldiers of another unit - ch 23. His conduct stands as the novel's shorthand for the Landwards' tendency to project its internal regulations onto allied formations.
Notable Quotes
- "You, Tunly. You are the prick." - Cohort-Inquirer Megget, House of Open Wounds, ch 23
- "He's not one of ours." - Cohort-Inquirer Megget, House of Open Wounds, ch 23
Tags
- monitor · #drunk · #military-officer