Road to Hell, Official Snippet #1

Many Thanks RFC
from DownUnder

I had reasoned as far as "Howan Fai Goutin" BUT not beyond.

Talents as regime security forces.

There are a large number of story lines in that thought...and the Authors seems to have spent some time there.

That will make for a fun ride.

brnicholas wrote:Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I have been waiting a long time for this!

I wonder how they are going to keep Chava from repudiating the treaty when he hears who Andrin is going to marry? I suspect his army would back him if he tried and them refusing to do so is the only thing that would stop him. It will be fun to see what happens next.

Nicholas

Yes, but while Chava has been able to keep a lid on the border kingdoms so far, they might present a serious objection now that they have the backing of the rest of Sharona.

The other point to consider is the opinion of the Uromathian people. The nobles would know from the start that it was Chava's fault he didn't cover for this possibility, and it probably wouldn't take long for Ternathian intelligence to spread the truth even if Chava was able to supress it.

Which does raise the question of what exactly are the talents of these families of Imperial Guards?

I suspect we have seen one already. I bet that the family of Sept Chieftains that produced PAAF Platoon-Captain Hulmok Arthag was founded by the bastard son or grandson of a member of one of those families. His talent certainly seems like the type of Talent that would be useful for them.

Nicholas

Mil-tech bard wrote:Talents as regime security forces.

There are a large number of story lines in that thought...and the Authors seems to have spent some time there.

That will make for a fun ride.

brnicholas wrote:Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I have been waiting a long time for this!

I wonder how they are going to keep Chava from repudiating the treaty when he hears who Andrin is going to marry? I suspect his army would back him if he tried and them refusing to do so is the only thing that would stop him. It will be fun to see what happens next.

Nicholas

I'm not so sure about the army supporting Chava. The Uromathian commander we met at Fort Salby was a pretty decent sort - I'm not sure he would be willing to go along with breaking a treaty just because people weren't following it the way Chava wanted (but were keeping to the letter of what he demanded). He was senior enough that his views are probably not uncommon (the top officers might be loyal to Chava, and not care about consequences for the people, but that doesn't help if the troops don't actually act).

tonyz wrote:Legally, Andrin is in the right, and any court would rule against Chandra if he tries to argue she's wrong. He drafted the amendment, so ambiguities get ruled against him.

But will this manage the diplomatic necessity of binding Sharona together? Will enough Uromathians buy it as an adequate marriage link to the Imperial Crown?

Well, none of Chava's neighbors like him, so they will probably all support the idea (if nothing else, they can expect a much friendlier consort this way, who will actually care about them). I'm not sure Chava's own populace particularly likes him, so they might not be too upset that he got outmaneuvered (through his own mistake).


Unfortunately, it's been a while since I last read the books, so I could well be misremembering important details.

If the text in the book is the same size as the snippet, we're gonna need wheelbarrows to get the book home from the bookstore!

Thanks, RFC. Really looking forwards to it.

As far as the story line of Talents as Regime Security Forces, this is the key passage in that snippet --

“Your Majesty,” Shamir Taje’s words were chipped ice, “I will personally shoot anyone who so much as breathes a syllable of what you just said.”

Zindel saw exactly the same fire in the eyes of every member of the Privy Council and he nodded in profound satisfaction. If he hadn’t trusted them completely, they wouldn’t have been on his Privy Council. And he knew Security ran periodic probes, from time to time, just to be sure. The families of the personal armsmen who guarded the Ternathian Imperial Family had, for generations, bred some of the oddest, most useful, and occasionally downright terrifying Talents on Sharona. Talents they very carefully never discussed with anyone but themselves and a reigning emperor or empress . . . and which they would be using once again very shortly.


If there were a turncoat on his staff, he’d know it within minutes.

There were times — many of them — when Zindel chan Calirath hated the knowledge that his armsman spied regularly upon honest and honorable men and women who’d sworn solemn oaths of allegiance to him and demonstrated their loyalty so frequently. But when Andrin’s life was at stake, he would take no chances. Not even with men and women he’d trusted for thirty years. Not when all it would take was thirty seconds to put his child’s life back into the crucible.

Key work here -- "bred", affirmative selective pressure over 50(+) generations to pick the most useful talents to spot internal security threats to the Ternathian Empire.

Chew on that a moment.

Now read this passage on how Emperor Zindel chan Calirath is going out of his way to protect and promote Darcel Kinlafia.

“I was thinking about Kelahm chan Helikos,” Zindel said, and Taje cocked his head, lips pursed. He stayed that way for a second or two, and then nodded.

“I think that might be an excellent notion, Your Majesty. Of course, Brithum will have a fit when you recall him.”

Brithum Dulan, the Ternathian Empire’s Councilor for Internal Affairs, was responsible for the empire’s counterintelligence services, and he would not be happy to give up Company-Captain Kelahm chan Helikos.

“Brithum will just have to get over it.” Zindel chuckled grimly. “Chan Helikos was only on loan to him from the beginning, after all.”

“As you say, Your Majesty. But, ah, would it be too much for me to ask you to break the news to him?”

The thing that stands out for me in that passage was that the "selective breeding pressure" for Regime Security force Talents is not limited to simply armed guards.

It extends to the privy council and the Calirath throne's allies as guided by the glimpses from the Calirath talent. Including talents and personalities completely outside the inner circles of the "Ternathian Imperial Onion" in every Sharonan generation since its founding.

Michael Everett wrote:If the text in the book is the same size as the snippet, we're gonna need wheelbarrows to get the book home from the bookstore!

I can't be the only one who copied RFC's post into a text editor to read it ...

drothgery wrote:

Michael Everett wrote:If the text in the book is the same size as the snippet, we're gonna need wheelbarrows to get the book home from the bookstore!

I can't be the only one who copied RFC's post into a text editor to read it ...

I use Firefox, and pressing Ctrl+- (Ctrl and the minus sign at the same time) a few times shrank the text down in a few seconds. I had to hit Ctrl++ a few times once I'd finished the snippet to read the posts that followed, since the base font size had been shrunk to 4 point or so!

Most browsers probably offer similar functionality, although Firefox must not have in the past, since I added the "Page Zoom Button" add-on ages ago. It allows you to increase or decrease the displayed font using the mouse, which is nice when I'm just reading and don't feel like grabbing for the keyboard.

Thanks RFC for the snippet, and I actually guessed right when I noted that he must be editing RTH based on his explanation of why it took him over two weeks to post the latest snippet of "Hell's Foundations Quiver" in the Safehold forum

I'm really excited that this fascinating series is going to continue, although I'm saddened that Linda Evans was unable to continue the project due to health reasons. (That's what I've been hearing anyway...)

It's been years since I read the first two books, but I distinctly recall that I expected exactly this loophole to solve the problem of the treaty negotiations becoming "Which of your sons get to rape my daughter?" when the prince died. I read that whole scene thinking "But she likes that one guy and he's a prince..." So no shocker there, and it we were so clearly tipped off about what would happen that I can't even count it as one of the half-dozen times I guessed something right in one of RFC's books!

So what happens to both of these empires when one of them stumbles onto Earth - or we find them?