HQ Snippet #21 3-27-15

n7axw wrote:

McGuiness wrote:One slight correction - Clyntahn thinks that he is God, or that whatever he wants is what God wants, so there's no discernible difference.

I'd really like to see the look on his face when he arrives in Hell and finds Langhorne and company waiting for him...

Or looking across the abyss and seeing Shan-wei in Paradise...

Don

Larry wrote:UMMM Spoiler alert (Although if your reading a snippet thread, that really seems redundant.)


I've been reading the post string with interest. All the back and forth of will the church be reformed, does Clyntahn get the axe, etc.
I think your all wrong.
I think our friendly neighborhood author is about to throw a curve ball right across the plate.
I think that the winter campaign is going to be phenomenally successful, just as it has looked like it will be till now, but at some point there are going to be two things that happen back in the Empire of Charis. One the Delthak works suffer a major catastrophe (Industrial accident or Rakurai strike, take your pick) causing a major supply crisis and two, the Chisholmian nobility organize a better than average coop attempt against the empire forcing a major diversion of forces intended for the front. I expect this to happen at just the wrong moment for our intrepid hero's and requiring the entire offensive to have to fall back on the mountains and the passes, with a band of scorched earth between them and the Army of God. I think that the story will strongly imply that increasing industry in Siddarmark (and elsewhere)will allow stabilization on the front, and the limited production of the new rifles and ammunition that occurred before the massive industrial disaster killed the assembly lines, will stave off complete disaster. I believe that the EoC forces will causes major damage to the Host of God so that it can't exploit the opportunity, and I believe that the purge of the nobility in Chisholm will leave the Empress free to begin a rapid expansion, with appropriate industrial safeguards in place, in Chisholm. I even think this will allow for expansion opportunities in Corisande as well. So at the end of the next book I think we'll be with a stabilized Siddarmark frontier along the Major mountain ranges and Shiloh, South March, Cliff Peak, Glacierheart, Midhold, Mountaincross,and Northland provinces solidly back in the Alliance hands. New Northhold, Ice March, and Hildermoss provinces essentially no mans lands where a complete lack of logistics support is making it hard for everyone to cross and constant raids by dragoons that both sides will have by then. Tarikah province firmly in church hands and Westmarch province a divided land with both sides in a trench warfare state. Multiple slowly developing new industrial centers (with no single point of failure like the Delthak works represents)bringing industrial capacity back up to were it can allow Charis to reopen the war, and coincidentally stifling the whining about Charis being the only people benefiting and welding everyone into a tighter internal alliance, and the whole development effort being paid for by the newly discovered silver deposits on Silverload.
And I think that David is going to leave it there for a bit while he catches his other series up. I've come to suspect that he really needs to write about some of the other stuff for a while and needs a good pause point. He has cranked out several in a row on this for us, but that's left some of the other series sort of treading water. I have zero evidence for this, and I'll be the first to admit it, but I can't shake the feeling that he and the missus could use a vacation [you know, cruise ship, Bahamas, long tall glasses of adult beverages with umbrellas in them, or maybe a cruise around the Italian peninsula with a visit to old and exotic locations of quaint and picturesque nature and real Neapolitan pizza. Some of you bibliophiles must take one, once in a while] and he's probably feeling like he needs to move some of the other series forward. I think there are several hints that he has, Cheshire Cat style, dropped that a reversal in fortune is coming, just because things are going WAY too well for the alliance, and he wants to bring balance to the force. I can't prove it... but every alarm bell is ringing in my head that an uh-oh moment is coming.
Oh and I think that Clyntahn is going to off Duchairn first, then make him a martyr and proclaim Charis did it.

Larry
(That kettle of fish ought to set some of you off!)
(And lets face it, at the rate the man has been cranking out books for you lot - and me too, since I'm buying them and posting here too - he and the wife eminently deserve a vacation!)

McGuiness wrote:SPOILERS - maybe

I believe this book will give us the ICN seizing the entire Gulf of Dohlar, the Battle of Gorath, and Dohlar being driven back to its borders and cut off from the rest of the CoGA countries. Check the map, it's surrounded by water Silkiah, and Siddarmark. It may have 97 million people (which oddly enough makes it one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, but its military is gutted and its capital is going to suffer a major naval attack, which may include commandos, the destruction of its navy, and the capture and possible execution of its king.

The next book should have the ICN steaming into Temple Bay and the ICA seizing the Temple and obliterating the Temple Guard and Inquisition under Clyntahn's command in the area. Clyntahn will also meet his maker. Too bad the CoC has renounced the Punishment, since if anyone ever deserved it, that narcissistic sociopath does!

Delthak is simply too large and spread out for a major industrial accident, and most of what it does and produces simply isn't explosive. There might be some snafus with the smokeless powder when it becomes available, but nothing on the scale of the Hairatha powder mill sabotage. As lyonheart pointed out, production is starting up in several other locations as well, further mitigating the damage any "major" accident might cause.

I agree that the title of HFQ denotes the doubts the CoGA will feel as its armies lose battle after battle, despite theoretically having God on their side while battling heretics.

The "rebellion" in Chisholm is only a question of time. Since the inner circle is expecting it and has SNARCs listening in, there won't be any surprises. Basically it's a process of giving the rebels enough rope to hang themselves. Don't forget that there are thousands of troops being trained nearby from across the empire who love their emperor and empress, and that devotion approaches idolatry among the common people of Chisholm where Sharleyan is concerned. Any attach on the Empress will end quite badly and bloody, and will get rid of the major impediments to industrializing Chisholm. A nasty TL priest or two will hang, along with a few nobles. Entertaining, but not a threat.

The MHoG is both dangerous, yet unwieldy. If its 600,000 rifles could be brought into battle at the same time, it would be a devastating force. Stacked in a line 3 deep, it could form a firing line more than 12 miles wide! Of course keeping that line supplied with food and especially water during battle would be utterly impossible, as would the logistics of keeping it supplied if it remains in a single group. Should it split into north and south armies and head for Guarnak and wherever Kaitswyrth is hiding (if he's still alive by then) its logistics would be more feasible, although if the ICA manages to cut off the canals and rivers behind it, the MHoG couldn't live off the land and would suffer the same fate as the AoS.

EHM could harry it the entire way down the Daivyn river with dragoons and howitzers, and the death toll his artillery could deal out is almost unimaginable. Depending on whether BGV has trapped or eliminated the AoSG, he could do the same as the CoGA engineers attempt to repair the canals, without which the MHoG cannot advance.

Magwair really needs to split the MHoG into multiple armies since it's so massive and difficult to supply, but Clyntahn is unlikely to go along with that. It's quite dangerous, but I'm not entirely sure whether it will do more damage to the allies or the civilian TLs.

That's my 2 cents for HFQ militarily, and by the end I expect the recapture of all of Siddarmark to be inevitable, since the CoGA's armies should be retreating or destroyed.

Next year, on to Zion!

BarryKirk wrote:I'm thinking Clyntahn will kill off Duchairn.

McGuiness wrote:SPOILERS - maybe

I believe this book will give us the ICN seizing the entire Gulf of Dohlar, the Battle of Gorath, and Dohlar being driven back to its borders and cut off from the rest of the CoGA countries. Check the map, it's surrounded by water Silkiah, and Siddarmark. It may have 97 million people (which oddly enough makes it one of the most densely populated countries on the planet, but its military is gutted and its capital is going to suffer a major naval attack, which may include commandos, the destruction of its navy, and the capture and possible execution of its king.

The next book should have the ICN steaming into Temple Bay and the ICA seizing the Temple and obliterating the Temple Guard and Inquisition under Clyntahn's command in the area. Clyntahn will also meet his maker. Too bad the CoC has renounced the Punishment, since if anyone ever deserved it, that narcissistic sociopath does!

Delthak is simply too large and spread out for a major industrial accident, and most of what it does and produces simply isn't explosive. There might be some snafus with the smokeless powder when it becomes available, but nothing on the scale of the Hairatha powder mill sabotage. As lyonheart pointed out, production is starting up in several other locations as well, further mitigating the damage any "major" accident might cause.

I agree that the title of HFQ denotes the doubts the CoGA will feel as its armies lose battle after battle, despite theoretically having God on their side while battling heretics.

The "rebellion" in Chisholm is only a question of time. Since the inner circle is expecting it and has SNARCs listening in, there won't be any surprises. Basically it's a process of giving the rebels enough rope to hang themselves. Don't forget that there are thousands of troops being trained nearby from across the empire who love their emperor and empress, and that devotion approaches idolatry among the common people of Chisholm where Sharleyan is concerned. Any attach on the Empress will end quite badly and bloody, and will get rid of the major impediments to industrializing Chisholm. A nasty TL priest or two will hang, along with a few nobles. Entertaining, but not a threat.

The MHoG is both dangerous, yet unwieldy. If its 600,000 rifles could be brought into battle at the same time, it would be a devastating force. Stacked in a line 3 deep, it could form a firing line more than 12 miles wide! Of course keeping that line supplied with food and especially water during battle would be utterly impossible, as would the logistics of keeping it supplied if it remains in a single group. Should it split into north and south armies and head for Guarnak and wherever Kaitswyrth is hiding (if he's still alive by then) its logistics would be more feasible, although if the ICA manages to cut off the canals and rivers behind it, the MHoG couldn't live off the land and would suffer the same fate as the AoS.

EHM could harry it the entire way down the Daivyn river with dragoons and howitzers, and the death toll his artillery could deal out is almost unimaginable. Depending on whether BGV has trapped or eliminated the AoSG, he could do the same as the CoGA engineers attempt to repair the canals, without which the MHoG cannot advance.

Magwair really needs to split the MHoG into multiple armies since it's so massive and difficult to supply, but Clyntahn is unlikely to go along with that. It's quite dangerous, but I'm not entirely sure whether it will do more damage to the allies or the civilian TLs.

That's my 2 cents for HFQ militarily, and by the end I expect the recapture of all of Siddarmark to be inevitable, since the CoGA's armies should be retreating or destroyed.

Next year, on to Zion!

n7axw wrote:Hi McGuiness,

Very nice, plausible piece of analysis.

I think that Sharley's nobles get the headsman, not the noose...

Clyntahn will have to agree to split up that big army. There are too many point of threat not to.

Otherwise I pretty much agree...

Don