HFQ Official Snippet #6 (oopsie!)

Lazalarlives wrote:

Randomiser wrote:On the second part of the Snippet, is the heading right? Are Dohlaran naval ships also identified as HMS whatever? -Snip-.

I'd figure they'd still be 'His Majesty's Ship'; it's probably the same for most nations. The only different ones were the NOG ships. They're part of the Royal Dohlaran navy.

As to the other part, I'm guessing it has to do with news about the destruction of 2/3rds of the Army Dohlar sent against Siddarmark. Lots of fathers, sons, and husbands not coming back, much less carrying the loot from the richest nation outside the Temple Lands on the mainland. This also means no territorial expansion, no new fiefs for second/third/fourth noble sons, and pretty much an entire year's GDP lost in the process.

It may be enough to shake the situation up in Dohlar - and depending on how badly the King takes it, it could end up costing previously 'untouchable' nobles more than they ever thought it could. Consider Thirsk's musings on the corruption in the acquisitions process. Who, in the end, becomes this scapegoat? And does the field commander have enough political capital remaining to shift the blame to the REMF's in the capital who assured the King that what he sent was more than enough, despite Thirsk's (!) limited input.

Anyhow, just my two bits.
Dave

I thought everyone here had already concluded that the Dohlarans were going to blame the Desnairans.

Hi LazarLives,

Yup, losing the whole army until Ahlverez is reported safe will cause mourning all over Dohlar, maybe some regret for tackling the republic, and some blow-back onto some of the more ambitious nobles.

However, given they've known that Rychtyr had retreated and has been stuck at Evrytyn for weeks apparently, ought to indicate the public knows more bad news is probably coming about Ahlverez's army, so trying to censor or deny it could be pretty stupid; and another reason why Thirsk isn't very upset, since he's not involved in such decisions, and doesn't bear any responsibility for them regardless of arguing against what's decided.

Ahlverez was far better supplied, I estimate he needed only about 18 dragon wagon loads per day, once Brahnselyk was up and running, with a 19 day turn around, for 342 dragons, which at an 85.5% active rate means a total of just 400 dragons at that point, as opposed to 6-7,000 dragons the Desnari need to move supplies the 900 miles from Thesmar, where even a dragon can only carry 75% of their wagon's payload a round trip of500 miles in 32 days.

Assuming the same average rate per day of 31.25 miles for the whole 900, the extra 80% means only 14.85 tons per dragon wagon (55% of the 27 ton max load) and a round trip of 58 days to deliver the 2538 tons of fodder to the 160 cavalry regiments plus their 50% remounts every day, that's 171 wagon loads or ~9913 just for the fodder over the 58 days with no spares, while food for 175,000 men not counting servants, medics, blacksmith's etc needs around 18 dragon wagon loads, or over 1044, for 10,957 before the 'spares' requirement of 85.5% bumps it up to 12,815+ dragons the IDA needed to feed itself everyday without foraging 900 miles from Thesmar, though that figure is direct; by the high road to Cheryk its about a thousand, ie add at least 11% more [ ie 14,097] or reduce the end payload to exactly half ans use 64 days for the 2 round trips.

So whoever's idea it was to approve going to Fort Tairys among the Go4 ought to take a real hit too.

If Ahlverez's army had around 50 infantry regiments and 25 cavalry, plus ~11 artillery regiments, it means some 3748 officers without adding staffs etc, so the aristocracy will definitely take a hit, as will the middle class, etc.

The effect upon support for the king, since blaming the church is unthinkable of course; will be very interesting to see.

L

Lazalarlives wrote:

Randomiser wrote:On the second part of the Snippet, is the heading right? Are Dohlaran naval ships also identified as HMS whatever? -Snip-.

I'd figure they'd still be 'His Majesty's Ship'; it's probably the same for most nations. The only different ones were the NOG ships. They're part of the Royal Dohlaran navy.

As to the other part, I'm guessing it has to do with news about the destruction of 2/3rds of the Army Dohlar sent against Siddarmark. Lots of fathers, sons, and husbands not coming back, much less carrying the loot from the richest nation outside the Temple Lands on the mainland. This also means no territorial expansion, no new fiefs for second/third/fourth noble sons, and pretty much an entire year's GDP lost in the process.

It may be enough to shake the situation up in Dohlar - and depending on how badly the King takes it, it could end up costing previously 'untouchable' nobles more than they ever thought it could. Consider Thirsk's musings on the corruption in the acquisitions process. Who, in the end, becomes this scapegoat? And does the field commander have enough political capital remaining to shift the blame to the REMF's in the capital who assured the King that what he sent was more than enough, despite Thirsk's (!) limited input.

Anyhow, just my two bits.
Dave

runsforcelery wrote:“I’m afraid you don’t quite have it straight yet,” she told him. “The Sisters don’t have a Mother Abbess anymore. We have a Mother Superior. She’s the one who determines what the Sisters as a whole do in the world, and, no, she doesn’t object to my ‘more secular activities,’ as you put it. That would be rather difficult for her to do, actually . . . since for the last twenty years or so, I’ve been the Mother Superior.”

What a difference with the Order of St. Zhernau! The Order has been keeping a core of secular and lay people informed about Safehold's true history, quietly waiting for the day that "Nimue" (in the form of Merlin) would arrive. Meanwhile, the Sisters have been forming an organization capable of sending out teams of assassins that would do the Old Man of the Mountain proud.

I have to say when I first saw the "oopsie" I wondered just for a second if the whole book had been snippeted!

just a second but thats not likely to happen a second time!

In chrisholm, the queen used the demands of the church to remove the more corrupt and greedy people involved, that were previously untouchable. SO could dohlar use the the churches desire for a scape goat to root out the corruption, that that impeaded or delayed the war effort.
The could blame the leader of the survivors, but he did bring his men home so cant be made that big a villain.
THirsk can not be blamed really, he is a navla man. THe duke of dohlar is the primary military man, and the army is the primary military force in the country, so he is a possible target.
I think most dohlars would blame desnair for their losses. THey would concentrating on keeping their borders secure.

Lazalarlives wrote:

Randomiser wrote:On the second part of the Snippet, is the heading right? Are Dohlaran naval ships also identified as HMS whatever? -Snip-.

I'd figure they'd still be 'His Majesty's Ship'; it's probably the same for most nations. The only different ones were the NOG ships. They're part of the Royal Dohlaran navy.

As to the other part, I'm guessing it has to do with news about the destruction of 2/3rds of the Army Dohlar sent against Siddarmark. Lots of fathers, sons, and husbands not coming back, much less carrying the loot from the richest nation outside the Temple Lands on the mainland. This also means no territorial expansion, no new fiefs for second/third/fourth noble sons, and pretty much an entire year's GDP lost in the process.

It may be enough to shake the situation up in Dohlar - and depending on how badly the King takes it, it could end up costing previously 'untouchable' nobles more than they ever thought it could. Consider Thirsk's musings on the corruption in the acquisitions process. Who, in the end, becomes this scapegoat? And does the field commander have enough political capital remaining to shift the blame to the REMF's in the capital who assured the King that what he sent was more than enough, despite Thirsk's (!) limited input.

Anyhow, just my two bits.
Dave

I think the confirmation is of the defeat of the RDA and IDA. Hennet's "escape" from that catastrophe would ensure that Dohlar got word quickly of this defeat via the semaphore. Discovering the retaking of Claw Island is unlikely for two reasons: The distance involved and the general competence of the ICN. It would take more than a month for a ship to sail out of Claw Island and reach Gorath and that assumes the steam powered vessels under Sharpfield's command would have let ANY ships escape. Indeed, I seem to recall Thirsk receiving word of Charisian ships operating in the Harchong Sea in AMF from some Harchongian noble (the Governor of Queiroz) in May 894 and the Manthyr began operating in that area two months earlier. Unless Sharpfield has some reason to allow any Dohlaran ships to escape (like say luring Thirsk out of Gorath Bay) we can assume they didn't let any ships escape. Since Sharpfield seized Claw Island in February 897 it will be a a bit longer before they hear about what happened on Claw Island.

Yet after the last book I had predicted (my thread is somewhere here) massive instability in both Dohlar and Desnair after the loss of the army. Desnair had lost its entire navy in HFAF and now it's lost the bulk of its army. Dohlar has not yet lost all of its army but that may happen soon and all that would remain to it by way of military forces would be its navy. This confirms to me the aforementioned desire to clamp down on the news of the Army's defeat since King Rahnyld and his nobles would find it difficult to maintain control over the common folk after learning that the army wouldn't be around to "enforce" the authority of the king and Mother Church. If the Navy goes down as well then Dohlar is screwed. That means that even if Thirsk receives word of Claw Island, the king and his nobles would not let him sail out as they would need his sailors and whatever troops he has under his command more than ever. I have a feeling that we're likely to hear of peasant rebellions in Desnair soon enough since they won't have the troops to maintain control over their empire (which is rather large in terms of territory).

Nice little bit of information; Thankyou RFC for the snippet.

The need for fast communications is totally dependent on the speed of operations. We have no evidence the SSK have been doing anything that requires speedy, integrated communication between a centralized authority and the rest of the hierarchy. We don't even know if they are organized as a hierarchy, for that matter.

As for the assassinations, I suspect they are done in an extremely tight cell structure on the order of the Rakurai operations of the COGA. Which SNARCs are also relatively ineffective against at least until the massive brute force attack they are planning with facial recognition software comes into full force.

bigrunt wrote:Decentralized structures don't work well when the lead decision maker is a couple of five-days away by secure communication. If that communication was discovered by the inquisition they would have a field day, especially with all the assassinations. I am thinking they have to have some kind of comms that owl has not detected yet.

Joat42 wrote:SSK may well have a decentralized structure since their goals so far hasn't necessitated quick communications until the war broke out which means it isn't as odd as you may think.

From a intelligence standpoint it makes a lot of sense for the head of SSK to be stationed in Zion since there is a lot of information that's flowing to it all the time, PLUS that it's a lot easier to send information from Zion to other places too compared to some out of they way abbey or cloister.

But now when the war is in full swing and SSK is taking an active roll faster communication is necessary, especially since Nynian may be the only one who knows all the agents/passphrases/deaddrops etc. in Zion and she now needs to disseminate some information quickly which means asking for a lift back to Zion.

Undercover Fat Kid wrote:Honestly, at this point I'm pretty sure that rfc could drop the whole book into the forums and he'd still make a mint from people like me who feel compelled to own hardcopy versions of everything.

He did this by accident awhile back with one of the Honorverse books (can't remember which one off the top of my head). He intended to post a short snippet, but posted the entire book instead. As I recall, the snippet was taken down but some readers had already seen it so the release of the E-Arc was moved up substantially.

Alistair wrote:I have to say when I first saw the "oopsie" I wondered just for a second if the whole book had been snippeted!

just a second but thats not likely to happen a second time!

Me too. Do we know why it does say "oopsie?"