Snippet #12

BTW is there a map which shows the towns etc of Boisseau?

isaac_newton wrote:something else that I noticed... Desnair is beginning to rebuild its spy system... so Charis is no longer pruning them back - at least outside the home islands [I presume]

I would be really disappointed if Charis didn't have a very good idea who they were and what they were reporting, nevertheless.

Charis has no real interest in stopping the nations spying on each other. Indeed, doing so would be counterproductive.

dobriennm wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I'm off to Atlanta for SphinxCon in about 20 minutes, so here is the next snippet before I go.

This is great!

Too bad it means the next (and possibly last) snippet is 2 weeks away.

Why? Sphinxcon is only a weekend and the book isn't published till 8th January.

dobriennm wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:I'm off to Atlanta for SphinxCon in about 20 minutes, so here is the next snippet before I go.

This is great!

Too bad it means the next (and possibly last) snippet is 2 weeks away.

Randomiser wrote:Why? Sphinxcon is only a weekend and the book isn't published till 8th January.

1-2 days to recover from the weekend plus re-connect with family (Monday and Tuesday are school holidays), start writing again to reduce the backlog he has, next weekend likely family time to make up for this weekend, more writing following week to keep on schedule (particularly with the upcoming 5 day school holiday for Thanksgiving approaching). Plus probably still recovering from the concussion(?) he suffered on one of his previous trips, and also following doctors orders to slow down.

I mean, the man has a life, too. The snippets don't take a lot of time, but I'm sure it sucks him back into the forum which takes time away from writing. It's important to see how his readers are feeling about what he's writing, but he has to balance it against his planned reduced writing time (per doctors orders).

Could he zip off another snippet next week? Maybe, depends on the above plus unplanned things (kids get sick? recovery from hurricane(s)/flooding?).

Plus, face it, the next snippet is likely the last before the book comes out. He might do a few more since this is a Tor book with no eARC, but we are close to the end of the snippets. We have enough to see the general setup of the problems facing Merlin and company with hints of their initial solutions.

Would I like snippets to continue until the book comes out? Sure, but that's not how the Author usually works (and it wouldn't be fair to the publisher).

And I'll enjoy whatever snippets the Author provides, but I don't expect him to keep to a strict schedule

lyonheart wrote:Hi PeterZ,

Kudos for another excellent analysis,

snip
The princedom of Selkar was only mentioned once in OAR, and not given a population in RFC's list 6&1/2 years ago, while Sodar had 37 million [compared to Delferahk's 83 million, if you think they're of comparable size], rather thin given its size and generally best known for their skill in stealing each other's sheep apparently.
snip
L

I keep coming back to the Cresent Mountains in Sodar. That range is named. One of three named ranges on the most recent map on Joe Buckley's site from regions the first story arc hasn't covered. Those are the Desnair Mountains in desnair, the Desolation Mountains in Pasquale and the Cresent Mountains. The Desloation Mountains is part of the Seijin Khody back story. The Desnair Mountains is referred to as the source of all Desnair's gold. That leaves the Crescent Mountains.

Railroads may open up that range to development. Selkar offers a coast to ship that output to other nations besides Harchong. Delfehrak, Ashton and Myratha provide acces to those mountains' other slope. The raw materials that range represents can fuel the industrialization of South Howard. Those nations may represent somewhere between 120-150 million people. that's not an insignificant number even if that is much smaller than other nations/empires.

I'm off to Atlanta for SphinxCon in about 20 minutes, so here is the next snippet before I go.

MY area of operations. RFC could give me a new snippet to post later this week.

isaac_newton wrote:something else that I noticed... Desnair is beginning to rebuild its spy system... so Charis is no longer pruning them back - at least outside the home islands [I presume]

I think it is likely safe to say that Charis knows exactly who is spying for who, who is pretending to spy for who but really spying for them, and everything else. And it is probably also safe to assume that Charis is letting some of these spies periodically discover/find/unearth 'confidential information' - either regarding upcoming military deployments, technological advances (not cutting edge, but beyond that spy's nations ability), and other useful information. Of course, Charis will periodically 'bust' a small spy ring or network so their enemies this Charis is still trying to hunt down spies - it's just that without the Jihad they can't control their populations to the extent they could during the war and therefore are not effective! (Don't knock the theory - many nations historically crack down much harder during times of war than during times of peace, so it would only be natural for spies to be more effective in times of peace).

This would have two primary advantages for Charis:
1- It helps spur the industrialization of the rest of Safehold, which is what they want and need to do; and
2- It allows the rest of Safehold to start to forget just how effective Charis actually was in anti-espionage.

isaac_newton wrote:well - it also answered my question as to what an 'automotive' was. Trains not road vehicles.

This early in Charis' Industrial Revolution, "automotive" would likely refer to BOTH, ie, any self powered land vehicle regardless of whether they moved on rails or not. It's just that trains would be more efficient than road vehicles... especially if you don't have much in the way of good roads to begin with.

In fact, IIRC, trains are STILL more efficient than road vehicles even today. Road vehicles dominate today largely because they're much more flexible when it comes to destinations and paved roads are significantly cheaper to build and maintain than iron/steel railroads. But when it comes to pure hauling capacity (which will be more important in early industrialization), trains are more efficient than an equivalent number of road vehicles.

evilauthor wrote:... especially if you don't have much in the way of good roads to begin with.

But Safehold DOES have "good roads to begin with." The quality of the high-road system is remarked on several times in textev.

Erls wrote:

isaac_newton wrote:something else that I noticed... Desnair is beginning to rebuild its spy system... so Charis is no longer pruning them back - at least outside the home islands [I presume]

I think it is likely safe to say that Charis knows exactly who is spying for who, who is pretending to spy for who but really spying for them, and everything else. And it is probably also safe to assume that Charis is letting some of these spies periodically discover/find/unearth 'confidential information' - either regarding upcoming military deployments, technological advances (not cutting edge, but beyond that spy's nations ability), and other useful information. Of course, Charis will periodically 'bust' a small spy ring or network so their enemies this Charis is still trying to hunt down spies - it's just that without the Jihad they can't control their populations to the extent they could during the war and therefore are not effective! (Don't knock the theory - many nations historically crack down much harder during times of war than during times of peace, so it would only be natural for spies to be more effective in times of peace).

This would have two primary advantages for Charis:
1- It helps spur the industrialization of the rest of Safehold, which is what they want and need to do; and
2- It allows the rest of Safehold to start to forget just how effective Charis actually was in anti-espionage.

Nahrmahn would have way too much fun building a wilderness of mirrors. Just because the networks are no longer being demolished, doesn't mean that they pass fully accurate information or that they aren't completely compromised. Think of the German network in Great Britain during WW2.