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It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by n7axw   » Tue Jul 21, 2015 4:37 pm

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evilauthor wrote:
SWM wrote:This is not a nit. It is a philosophical question. The book isn't trying to give definitive answers to deep philosophical questions--just food for philosophical thought.


My own personal philosophy (or headcanon):

Here I have the Holy Bible (or Holy Writ, or Koran, or whatever). It's a cheap mass produced copy small enough to fit in a pocket.

And over here I also have the Holy Bible (or whatever), except it's a big, hard cover with large print and fancy colors and illustrations, and has a huge price sticker to match. But otherwise, it has the same wording and information content.

Are they the same Bible (or whatever)?

The real answer of course is, yes and no. It's yes that they have the same stories, the same lessons, the same information content. But it's also no because the two have different packaging.

By the same token, Merlin and Nimue 3.0 are both the same as Nimue 1.0 and not the same. The PACKAGING is different between all of them of course, but the information, ie the soul, is the same for all of them. And being "just a copy" makes no instance of Nimue any less valid than any copy of the Bible (or whatever) makes it any less valid than the original.


Not a bad analogy. However it doesn't take into account the reality that the copies begin diverging from the original and from each other the instant they come into existence.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by evilauthor   » Wed Jul 22, 2015 2:41 pm

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n7axw wrote:Not a bad analogy. However it doesn't take into account the reality that the copies begin diverging from the original and from each other the instant they come into existence.

Don


That's called "becoming their own person".
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by n7axw   » Wed Jul 22, 2015 4:37 pm

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evilauthor wrote:
n7axw wrote:Not a bad analogy. However it doesn't take into account the reality that the copies begin diverging from the original and from each other the instant they come into existence.

Don


That's called "becoming their own person".


Yep. And according to my working definition, that's what souls are all about.

Don
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by Isilith   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:08 am

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This has always bugged the crap out of me. In MTaT, Byrgair, the Dohlaran officer, is referenced to have combat experience against Sodaran raiders. It even shows him remembering years of fights against them, in contrast to the fight against the Siddarmarkians and the results of his field artillery against them.

The problem with that is that none of that could have happened. There is no way Sodar and Dohlar could have had border clashes, or raiders crossing the border. Sodar would have had to fight THROUGH Desnair to get to Dohlar. Heck, they would have had to fight through multiple provinces of Desnair.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by SWM   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:35 am

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Isilith wrote:This has always bugged the crap out of me. In MTaT, Byrgair, the Dohlaran officer, is referenced to have combat experience against Sodaran raiders. It even shows him remembering years of fights against them, in contrast to the fight against the Siddarmarkians and the results of his field artillery against them.

The problem with that is that none of that could have happened. There is no way Sodar and Dohlar could have had border clashes, or raiders crossing the border. Sodar would have had to fight THROUGH Desnair to get to Dohlar. Heck, they would have had to fight through multiple provinces of Desnair.

Raiders can come in by boat.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by Isilith   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:39 am

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SWM wrote:
Isilith wrote:This has always bugged the crap out of me. In MTaT, Byrgair, the Dohlaran officer, is referenced to have combat experience against Sodaran raiders. It even shows him remembering years of fights against them, in contrast to the fight against the Siddarmarkians and the results of his field artillery against them.

The problem with that is that none of that could have happened. There is no way Sodar and Dohlar could have had border clashes, or raiders crossing the border. Sodar would have had to fight THROUGH Desnair to get to Dohlar. Heck, they would have had to fight through multiple provinces of Desnair.

Raiders can come in by boat.


The only coastline Sodar has is in Schwei bay, the same bay that is controlled by the Schweimouth strait... that south Harchong controls. Not to mention that Dohlar was a naval power, and Sodar most definitely is not a naval power.

Also, we are talking about an ARMY officer remembering his many battles against Sodarian raiders, battles on land, with the "cut and the thrust" as he put it in his memories. Not naval battles.

I think this was definitely an Oooooops, brain fart of a nit. As there is no way, at least not a plausible way, for Dohlar and Sodar to have fought.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by SWM   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:44 am

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Isilith wrote:
SWM wrote:Raiders can come in by boat.


The only coastline Sodar has is in Schwei bay, the same bay that is controlled by the Schweimouth strait... that south Harchong controls. Not to mention that Dohlar was a naval power, and Sodar most definitely is not a naval power.

Also, we are talking about an ARMY officer remembering his many battles against Sodarian raiders, battles on land, with the "cut and the thrust" as he put it in his memories. Not naval battles.

I think this was definitely an Oooooops, brain fart of a nit. As there is no way, at least not a plausible way, for Dohlar and Sodar to have fought.

The fact that the mouth of the bay is controlled by South Harchong is largely irrelevant. Sodar can still send out raids in force by sea, which drop land forces along the Dohlaran coastline.

I don't rule out an oops, but it is not implausible. Land forces fought against Viking raiders quite frequently in the early Middle Ages.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by JeffEngel   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:29 am

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SWM wrote:
Isilith wrote:
The only coastline Sodar has is in Schwei bay, the same bay that is controlled by the Schweimouth strait... that south Harchong controls. Not to mention that Dohlar was a naval power, and Sodar most definitely is not a naval power.

Also, we are talking about an ARMY officer remembering his many battles against Sodarian raiders, battles on land, with the "cut and the thrust" as he put it in his memories. Not naval battles.

I think this was definitely an Oooooops, brain fart of a nit. As there is no way, at least not a plausible way, for Dohlar and Sodar to have fought.

The fact that the mouth of the bay is controlled by South Harchong is largely irrelevant. Sodar can still send out raids in force by sea, which drop land forces along the Dohlaran coastline.

I don't rule out an oops, but it is not implausible. Land forces fought against Viking raiders quite frequently in the early Middle Ages.

For that matter, a Dohlaran officer could have served as a mercenary in service to South Harchong or Desnair. If you were military and didn't have employment at home, that was common.

I don't rule out an oops either - it's just not a slam-dunk case that it was one.
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Re: It's nitpicking time! List your favorite safehold nits
Post by Louis R   » Thu Jul 23, 2015 12:56 pm

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There appears from the map to have been an attempt to fortify the passages in lower Schwei Bay, but since they appear to be around 40 miles wide, that's not going to do a lot to bottle up any raiders out of Sodar. Schweimouth passage is at least 60-80: any Harchongese 'control' of the bay is going to be nominal at best. And that assumes that they had the slightest interest in bottling up said raiders in the first place. Rahnyld was making himself a pain in any number of butts, so South Harchong might well have seen it as a reasonable investment to pay Sodar to go bother him instead of themselves, assuming that they needed to go beyond providing loot-disposal services in the first place. And that ignores the coast of Shipwreck Bay completely, although since it would be a much longer trip Dohlar wouldn't be high on the target list for raiders on that side. [Heck, it wouldn't be all that odd, historically, for the Harchongese on Schwei Bay to be cooperating with Sodarans while folks in Queiroz or Kyznetsov are fighting off their cousins]

Dohlaran naval power does complicate things, but having a navy doesn't always provide that much protection against raiders. If the fleet's down at Thesmar, it won't do the folks at Bess much good. You can't, particularly with galleys, even count on catching the raiders on the way out of the Gulf. And, if you try to spread out more, you're simply inviting 40-50 raiders to jump a squadron of your galleys - and then go on to loot the places they were protecting anyway. If the Sodarans are making a living raiding, they're likely to be better seamen than even Thirsk's Navy have become to date, and that's the kind of thing that happens to amateurs when they swim with the sharks.

There's also the fact that one gets the impression that the Dohlaran Navy is pretty recent as a serious institution. It may actually be a response to a Sodaran threat, which Rahnyld then decided made a nice support for other ambitions. So while fights with raiders may figure prominently in some officers experience and memories, they actually lie a couple of decades in the past.

SWM wrote:
Isilith wrote:
The only coastline Sodar has is in Schwei bay, the same bay that is controlled by the Schweimouth strait... that south Harchong controls. Not to mention that Dohlar was a naval power, and Sodar most definitely is not a naval power.

Also, we are talking about an ARMY officer remembering his many battles against Sodarian raiders, battles on land, with the "cut and the thrust" as he put it in his memories. Not naval battles.

I think this was definitely an Oooooops, brain fart of a nit. As there is no way, at least not a plausible way, for Dohlar and Sodar to have fought.

The fact that the mouth of the bay is controlled by South Harchong is largely irrelevant. Sodar can still send out raids in force by sea, which drop land forces along the Dohlaran coastline.

I don't rule out an oops, but it is not implausible. Land forces fought against Viking raiders quite frequently in the early Middle Ages.
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