TFT Snippet #9 (fixed to satisfy smart alecs)

cnrd22 wrote:

dobriennm wrote:
Still think we're jumping ahead 20 years.

As noted above - from people who were lucky to actually read the advance reader copy Tor has provided - I heard a few things that I think will prove accurate - the book ends in March 916 (as the first Archangel return date is summer 915, the book has to take us past it), there are a lot of weddings, funerals and economic turmoil, but not much war and the snippet like structure following a few threads across years holds until the end

Spoilsport!

How are we going to continue with wild and baseless speculation if you keep bringing in facts and reality??

Hi clancy688,

I remember reading the estimated total figure of 160,000 tons of gold mined and in use back in the 70's or 80's in Fortune magazine among other financial mag's, and that almost all historical gold (going back to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese etc) had been recycled many times.

That would mean only 750-1000 tons mined annually since, a reasonable figure.

Too bad the typo can't be fixed.

Of course, it doesn't change the effective colossal wealth involved.

L

Best wishes to all,

clancy688 wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:The enormous wealth under Silverlode Island’s Mohryah Mountains had come as quite a shock when Nahrmahn found a description of it in the notes Pei Shan-wei’s survey crews had left in Owl’s memory. It dwarfed Old Earth’s Comstock Lode. So far, the prospecting crews, working without benefit of Shan-wei’s notes for obvious reasons, had found considerably less than a third of the major ore bodies under the mountains, yet those same notes indicated that what they had found would ultimately produce in excess of ten million tons of silver and six and a half million tons of gold.

And that was barely the tip of an iceberg that belonged—in toto—not to the Charisian Empire, but specifically to the House of Ahrmahk. In terms of real buying power, Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk were undoubtedly the wealthiest individuals in the history of the human race.

Period.

Obviously, they couldn’t simply dump that kind of gold and silver into their own economy without fatally overheating it. But. . . .

Heya,

thanks for the snippet!

But I just *had to* jump on this one. Bold parts are by me.

Is that number correct? O_o

According to this source ( https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-su ... been-mined ), the amount of gold mined so far in the history of the planet is 0.19 million tons. In all the centuries, on all the continents, in all the mines combined.

So... these 6.5 million tons from that location alone just... don't sound right. Not even mentioning the "tip of the iceberg" bit. ^^;

Same goes for silver, btw. All silver mined is ~1.5 million.

dobriennm wrote:
Spoilsport!

How are we going to continue with wild and baseless speculation if you keep bringing in facts and reality??

Actually, there is so much to speculate based on what we know:

- what happens in 915 with the archangels? (my strong guess is nothing because they are way too powerful for Charis and the Inner Circle for now)

- how does the Reveal happen? (my guess is the Inner Circle seeds it sneakily in a way or another - discussed various possibilities in other threads - but it will be driven by temple hierarchy who discover those seeds)

- why will WW2 on Safehold happen and who will fight against whom? (my guess is it will essentially be a secular war for dominance on Charis fought between Charis, Dohlar and the North harchong independent provinces on one side, and Siddarmark, South Harchong and Desnair on the other side with the Border States and the Temple split between the sides)

- what happens to CoGA? (my guess reformed but existing even after the Reveal)

- how will rakurai be defeated? (my guess - no idea that is not really lame but see below)

- will the Archangels actually return in the future? (probably and somehow it will be tied with the defeat of rakurai, but it will happen after Safehold is a more or less united Federation led by Charis and the Church - which may be a mixture of Coga and Church of Charis)

- who will die in TFT and what marriages will happen, who will be admitted to the Inner Circle etc? (my guess that at the least the Grand Vicar, protector Stohnar and Thirsk will die of natural causes, there will be a few marriages - Dayvin comes to mind at the least, maybe the young king of Dohlar, maybe the crown princess, the Inner Circle will continue expanding even after the failure with Eastshare)

lyonheart wrote:Hi clancy688,

I remember reading the estimated total figure of 160,000 tons of gold mined and in use back in the 70's or 80's in Fortune magazine among other financial mag's, and that almost all historical gold (going back to the ancient Egyptians and Chinese etc) had been recycled many times.

That would mean only 750-1000 tons mined annually since, a reasonable figure.

Too bad the typo can't be fixed.

Of course, it doesn't change the effective colossal wealth involved.

L

Best wishes to all,

runsforcelery wrote:The enormous wealth under Silverlode Island’s Mohryah Mountains had come as quite a shock when Nahrmahn found a description of it in the notes Pei Shan-wei’s survey crews had left in Owl’s memory. It dwarfed Old Earth’s Comstock Lode. So far, the prospecting crews, working without benefit of Shan-wei’s notes for obvious reasons, had found considerably less than a third of the major ore bodies under the mountains, yet those same notes indicated that what they had found would ultimately produce in excess of ten million tons of silver and six and a half million tons of gold.

And that was barely the tip of an iceberg that belonged—in toto—not to the Charisian Empire, but specifically to the House of Ahrmahk. In terms of real buying power, Cayleb and Sharleyan Ahrmahk were undoubtedly the wealthiest individuals in the history of the human race.

Period.

Obviously, they couldn’t simply dump that kind of gold and silver into their own economy without fatally overheating it. But. . . .

clancy688 wrote:
Heya,

thanks for the snippet!

But I just *had to* jump on this one. Bold parts are by me.

Is that number correct? O_o

According to this source ( https://www.gold.org/about-gold/gold-su ... been-mined ), the amount of gold mined so far in the history of the planet is 0.19 million tons. In all the centuries, on all the continents, in all the mines combined.

So... these 6.5 million tons from that location alone just... don't sound right. Not even mentioning the "tip of the iceberg" bit. ^^;

Same goes for silver, btw. All silver mined is ~1.5 million.

OK, the planet is much richer in heavy metals than Earth is. They need to expand the money supply at least as fast as the economy is expanding, or bad things will happen. Please, however, skip the 50 ton solid plutonium boulders.

phillies wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:The enormous wealth under Silverlode Island’s Mohryah Mountains had come as quite a shock
<SNIP>
what they had found would ultimately produce in excess of ten million tons of silver and six and a half million tons of gold.

{Gee that's a ridiculous lot of bullion wrote several}

OK, the planet is much richer in heavy metals than Earth is. They need to expand the money supply at least as fast as the economy is expanding, or bad things will happen. Please, however, skip the 50 ton solid plutonium boulders.

Just checking we are all aware of the RFC post that said he was talking tons of ore not metal and apologising for any confusion.

Hi Randomiser,

Yup, but even at 0.5% silver and 0.1% gold per ore ton, it's still going to be worth huge amounts of money; and it is only the first of the four mother-lodes, so the EoC isn't going to have any normal financial concerns about funding its industrial expansion or any future wars.

Meanwhile Desnair's may suddenly run out, the way mines do, which might be a very interesting plot turning point.

Shouldn't Shan Wei's notes describe the limits of Desnair's goldmines, and OWL's remotes determine how close they are to reaching them, which might explain why the inner circle seems so blase about Desnair?

After 8-9 centuries of mining, far longer than any single Terran gold or silver mine I know of, they should be close to running out, don't you think?

That might put the kibosh on any nefarious Desnairian plans, or their pursuit or execution in the next war.

I'd love to read the scene where Mahrys IV and his counselors suddenly find out they're broke.

Delicious doesn't begin to describe how much fun that could be.

OTOH, mining deeply brought the need for steam engines etc to pump them out, so I'm curious why that hasn't happened yet in Desnair.

Are the mine sited windmills that effective in pumping them out?

This may need its own thread to properly develop, but getting back to the topic at hand:

So while the Mohryah lode may have gone down from multiple tens of thousands of trillions of Charisian dollars to multiple tens of trillions, Cayleb and Sharleyan are still easily the richest people in history. OK?

If this requires another glorious data-dump from RFC, great!

All the best to everyone,

L

Randomiser wrote:quote="phillies"

quote="runsforcelery"
The enormous wealth under Silverlode Island’s Mohryah Mountains had come as quite a shock
<SNIP>
what they had found would ultimately produce in excess of ten million tons of silver and six and a half million tons of gold. /quote

{Gee that's a ridiculous lot of bullion wrote several}

OK, the planet is much richer in heavy metals than Earth is. They need to expand the money supply at least as fast as the economy is expanding, or bad things will happen. Please, however, skip the 50 ton solid plutonium boulders.

Just checking we are all aware of the RFC post that said he was talking tons of ore not metal and apologising for any confusion.[/quote]

Hi lyonheart

Oh yes, they're rich as Croesus, as the saying goes.

At least I think, doing some quick research on the internet and looking at sites that seem reasonable. The gold producing companies' marketing organisation considers a gold mine to have High grade ore if it contains 10g/tonne of gold. The second highest grade production site on earth has 22.2g/Tonne. Really high grade silver ore, which we seem to be running out of here, would be 500g/tonne. Call it 25g/T for the gold. So I make it that the total contents found so far would then turn out to be about 500 Tonnes of silver and 162.5 Tonnes of gold. That's with 100% extraction and recovery rates. How much is that worth of Safehold? Your guess is probably better than mine.

Edit Having just checked LAMA, RFC says the present deposit, the 1st of 4, comes to just over 10 trillion YoG 896 Charisian Marks. At least one of the other 3 is 'richer'.

As for Desnair, do we actually have textev for how long their famous mines have been in operation?

Randomiser wrote:Hi lyonheart

Oh yes, they're rich as Croesus, as the saying goes.

At least I think, doing some quick research on the internet and looking at sites that seem reasonable. The gold producing companies' marketing organisation considers a gold mine to have High grade ore if it contains 10g/tonne of gold. The second highest grade production site on earth has 22.2g/Tonne. Really high grade silver ore, which we seem to be running out of here, would be 500g/tonne. Call it 25g/T for the gold. So I make it that the total contents found so far would then turn out to be about 500 Tonnes of silver and 162.5 Tonnes of gold. That's with 100% extraction and recovery rates. How much is that worth of Safehold? Your guess is probably better than mine.

Edit Having just checked LAMA, RFC says the present deposit, the 1st of 4, comes to just over 10 trillion YoG 896 Charisian Marks. At least one of the other 3 is 'richer'.

As for Desnair, do we actually have textev for how long their famous mines have been in operation?

I don't recall any textev on the remaining value of the deposits in Desnair. One suspects that the current Head Counselor has a good idea of how much longer their mines will continue producing. Which further suggests that there are other reasons for Desnair's quest for wealth.

lyonheart wrote:
OTOH, mining deeply brought the need for steam engines etc to pump them out, so I'm curious why that hasn't happened yet in Desnair.

Are the mine sited windmills that effective in pumping them out?

Not a geologist, but maybe some quirk of how the Desnairian mountains formed means their gold veins are easier to get to, so they don't need anything more than windmills.

Which could get fun if it turns out places like Sodar had gold deposits all along and just couldn't get to them without Lywysite mining charges and steam-powered pumps.

Julia Minor wrote:

lyonheart wrote:
OTOH, mining deeply brought the need for steam engines etc to pump them out, so I'm curious why that hasn't happened yet in Desnair.

Are the mine sited windmills that effective in pumping them out?

Not a geologist, but maybe some quirk of how the Desnairian mountains formed means their gold veins are easier to get to, so they don't need anything more than windmills.

Which could get fun if it turns out places like Sodar had gold deposits all along and just couldn't get to them without Lywysite mining charges and steam-powered pumps.

I wonder if the King of sodar will get a visitation from a seijin regarding metal deposits on his side of the Crescent Mountains?