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official snippet #10

Fans of Bahzell and Tomenack come on in! Let's talk about David's fantasy series and our favorite hradani!
Re: official snippet #10
Post by PeterZ   » Mon Mar 16, 2015 3:41 pm

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Lessee now.....Bahzell is risking his life and his fellow Champion of Tomanak courser Wind Brother is silent? Methinks something is rotten in Belhadan or this is not the Bahzell and Leeana we have grownso attached to.

Louis R wrote:He's already done that.

His problem at the end was talking them into letting him _leave_ after making the mistake of announcing that he expected an imminent attack.

Unfortunately for somebody, I think he struck out on that one.


lyonheart wrote:Thanks RFC, for another great snippet!

I agree this is the most facet filled yet!

What does Wencit do next to stop them from joining him?

L


looksbeforeheleaps wrote:I think this is the most interesting SotS snippet yet.

I really like the look at Norfressan politics. I also like Wencit explaining (sort of) why he has to ignore (for now) someone that he knows is practicing black wizardry.

The confirmation that it haa been at least 60 years since Oath of Swords is also welcome.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by Graydon   » Mon Mar 16, 2015 3:55 pm

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PeterZ wrote:Lessee now.....Bahzell is risking his life and his fellow Champion of Tomanak courser Wind Brother is silent? Methinks something is rotten in Belhadan or this is not the Bahzell and Leeana we have grownso attached to.


We've at least sixty years in the future from the last look we got into these stories.

Pretty sure both coursers are dead of their age. I might go so far as to suggest the daughter may be, in part, a response to the loss.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by dan92677   » Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:28 pm

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From snippet #9 after Bazell tossed kenhodan the sword: “And I’m sure one of Tomanāk’s champions wouldn’t have minded healing you if you hadn’t caught it,” Wencit said a bit repressively.

Does this mean that Leeana is ALSO a Champion of Tomanak?

I'm still waiting for the appearance of the two coursers, and Brandark, too...

Let's see... Wencit has a very nice warhorse, kenhodan hasn't anything (yet), hmmm... Let's see if we can't imagine what possibly could ensue.

Gods!! I'd really like the next chapter, like right now!!!
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 12:09 am

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Graydon wrote:
PeterZ wrote:Lessee now.....Bahzell is risking his life and his fellow Champion of Tomanak courser Wind Brother is silent? Methinks something is rotten in Belhadan or this is not the Bahzell and Leeana we have grownso attached to.


We've at least sixty years in the future from the last look we got into these stories.

Pretty sure both coursers are dead of their age. I might go so far as to suggest the daughter may be, in part, a response to the loss.


I don't think so. This is an excellent way to write in alternative reality and heighten the poignancy of our attachment to the key characters. Begin this story arc in a close but no cigar reality that see our beloved heros die. The next step is either Wencit calls in OUR Bahzell or Kenhoden gets called by OUR Wencit.

That makes more sense than Leeana not showing 60 years of age. In OUR story Leeana got pregnant at the tail end of WMC. Well strongly suggested. OoS was 9 years before WMC began and Bahzell had been sent as hostage 3 years prior. That timeline suggests Brandark and Bahzell have been friends for 23 years. Bahzell gives his age in WMC at I believe 46 which makes him 57 now. Those ages to not match the numbers being tossed about. I don't believe this is the Bahzell some think it is.
Last edited by PeterZ on Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by dan92677   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 2:11 am

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Hmmm, an interesting idea. Of course, our author isn't particularly capricious or devious, is he (not personally, just story-line-wise)?

I imagine he's already rolling on the floor re: our current thoughts.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by Eagleeye   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:45 am

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PeterZ wrote:I don't think so. This is an excellent way to write in alternative reality and heighten the poignancy of our attachment to the key characters. Begin this story arc in a close but no cigar reality that see our beloved heros die. The next step is either Wencit calls in OUR Bahzell or Kenhoden gets called by OUR Wencit.

That makes more sense than Leeana not showing 60 years of age. In OUR story Leeana got pregnant at the tail end of WMC. Well strongly suggested. OoS was 9 years before WMC began and Bahzell had been sent as hostage 3 years prior. That timeline suggests Brandark and Bahzell have been friends for 23 years. Bahzell gives his age in WMC at I believe 41 which makes him 52 now. Those ages to not match the numbers being tossed about. I don't believe this is the Bahzell some think it is.


Why, oh why is it, that any word of RFC is chirurgically dissected? Sometimes, even if spoken from his lips, a word or a phrase is simply that - a word or a phrase.
And he is only human, too, you know, so allow for some errors or inconsistencies on his side, please.

I, at least, don't try to speculate if I don't have enough data to build any speculation on a sound enough base ... and regarding Leanna, Bahzell and the coursers in this book, we simply don't have enough data. So, as long as there is no additional input which contradict it, it is (at least in my eyes) the original universe that we have known through the 4 novels which preceded SotS.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 8:01 am

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Recall what Phrobus said in the prologue of WMC. That the events of Bahzell's story approach a cusps which can influence an entire related cable of universes. How, pray tell, can one universe influence others without contact with them?

Each universe is decided by the choices made by the denizens within. Those decisions are independent of the gods and other universes. Unless creatures from those other universes can move between universes. We know that has happened. RFC has also telegraphed alternate realities in the books with Sword Brother. Feel free to speculate on your narrow guidelines. I prefer to take the full warp and woof of the stories as a guide to mine.

Eagleeye wrote:
PeterZ wrote:I don't think so. This is an excellent way to write in alternative reality and heighten the poignancy of our attachment to the key characters. Begin this story arc in a close but no cigar reality that see our beloved heros die. The next step is either Wencit calls in OUR Bahzell or Kenhoden gets called by OUR Wencit.

That makes more sense than Leeana not showing 60 years of age. In OUR story Leeana got pregnant at the tail end of WMC. Well strongly suggested. OoS was 9 years before WMC began and Bahzell had been sent as hostage 3 years prior. That timeline suggests Brandark and Bahzell have been friends for 23 years. Bahzell gives his age in WMC at I believe 41 which makes him 52 now. Those ages to not match the numbers being tossed about. I don't believe this is the Bahzell some think it is.


Why, oh why is it, that any word of RFC is chirurgically dissected? Sometimes, even if spoken from his lips, a word or a phrase is simply that - a word or a phrase.
And he is only human, too, you know, so allow for some errors or inconsistencies on his side, please.

I, at least, don't try to speculate if I don't have enough data to build any speculation on a sound enough base ... and regarding Leanna, Bahzell and the coursers in this book, we simply don't have enough data. So, as long as there is no additional input which contradict it, it is (at least in my eyes) the original universe that we have known through the 4 novels which preceded SotS.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by jsburbidge   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:38 am

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PeterZ wrote:Recall what Phrobus said in the prologue of WMC. That the events of Bahzell's story approach a cusps which can influence an entire related cable of universes. How, pray tell, can one universe influence others without contact with them?


That has actually been answered fairly clearly: the multiverse (which, as described, looks more like the multi-brane multiverse of modern cosmological theory than the continually branching splitting of Everett-Wheeler-Graham) was formed out of what had originally been the single body of Orr's power. The more universes Phrobus controls, either directly or by his agents the other dark gods, the more of that power he can draw on. Shifts in balance of power at that extra-universal level can have effects which can be perceived by the gods directly but not by created beings inside the universes, i.e. they change the local landscape.

PeterZ wrote:Each universe is decided by the choices made by the denizens within. Those decisions are independent of the gods and other universes. Unless creatures from those other universes can move between universes. We know that has happened. RFC has also telegraphed alternate realities in the books with Sword Brother. Feel free to speculate on your narrow guidelines. I prefer to take the full warp and woof of the stories as a guide to mine.


This looks rather like RFC's arabesque on how the Safehold story won't end.

His novels in the Bahzellverse to date have indeed involved crossings from universe to universe: that's where demons and devils come from. Aside from transfer laterally via wizardry in "Sword Brother", though, there have been no indications that the gods of light transfer agents in the same way; and if they did they'd presumably appear as analogues of low-level angels.

RFC has indicated in the past, when talking generally about his plans for this series, that it was to be in effect a next generation series. Bahzell, at about a hundred and ten or twenty, is still in his prime as a hradani, and he's certain to have a role in the plot as it unfolds, but he's not central to this series. However, Tellian, Markhos, Charrow, Kaeritha, will all by this time be dead or at least out of action. (Kaeritha could be around, but not active.) The fact that himself has elided what were to be two additional Bahzell books from the publication schedule doesn't mean that he's elided the events in them from the timeline. As regards the coursers -- had he wished, Weber could have given them an extended hradani-level lifespan from the start: they're a made-up species. The fact that he didn't implies fairly strongly that he intended them to be dead by now.

(It's worth remembering, too, that this is a five-book series -- longer than the total War God books previously published put together. In theory, Bahzell could have a large part to play in the overall story arc and vanish from this book as soon as Wencit and Kenhodan walk out of the bar. In practice, as RFC writes multi-point-of-view stories, and given the way in which the book blurb is phrased, I don't think this will happen. But I do think that this isn't, centrally, a "Bahzell" book, on the balance of probabilities.)

As far as what we actually know goes: between Bahzell and Leeana, there's been a set of references to the past which point to events in all four of the previous books and are entirely consistent with them. As was pointed out in the last thread, there's also nothing to say that there isn't a sixty-year-old half-hradani child out there corresponding to Vaijon's little comment at the end of WMC. The references to Leeana's apparent age have been paired emphatically with other references to her unexpected maturity, and RFC has very carefully provided the appearance of Isvaria (about which there was some speculation at the time, whether it made sense for her just to appear to provide a pep talk) as a mechanism for Leeana's extended lifespan.

As far as foreshadowings go: this snippet has highlighted, again, the dictum that Champions of Tomanak tend not to die in their beds. I would not go so far as to predict, but would not be surprised if Bahzell (at least) dies (probably heroically) before the end of the series, and (given Wencit's foreshadowings) at a point where things look very dark indeed. (One other small foreshadowing that makes sense with a sixty-year gap: "I’ve no doubt he does remind you of someone", in that context, suggests Kenhodan might be a son of somebody Bahzell has met.)

Dragging in another Bahzell from another universe would seem to me in that context to be cheapening the effect of that sacrifice. RFCs other books have shown that he's willing to kill off central characters, and he's spoken in interviews about the importance of showing the real cost of conflict, even (or especially) in a story arc leading to ultimate victory.
Last edited by jsburbidge on Tue Mar 17, 2015 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by Peter2   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 1:02 pm

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jsburbidge wrote:
[snip]

As far as foreshadowings go: this snippet has highlighted, again, the dictum that Champions of Tomanak tend not to die in their beds. I would not go so far as to predict, but would not be surprised if Bahzell (at least) dies (probably heroically) before the end of the series, and (given Wencit's foreshadowings) at a point where things look very dark indeed. (One other small foreshadowing that makes sense with a sixty-year gap: "I’ve no doubt he does remind you of someone", in that context, suggests he might be a son of somebody Bahzell has met.)

[snip]



I cannot help remembering how a translucent Vaijon turned up at the end of "War Maid's Choice".
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Re: official snippet #10
Post by PeterZ   » Tue Mar 17, 2015 3:58 pm

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jsburbidge wrote:
PeterZ wrote:Recall what Phrobus said in the prologue of WMC. That the events of Bahzell's story approach a cusps which can influence an entire related cable of universes. How, pray tell, can one universe influence others without contact with them?


That has actually been answered fairly clearly: the multiverse (which, as described, looks more like the multi-brane multiverse of modern cosmological theory than the continually branching splitting of Everett-Wheeler-Graham) was formed out of what had originally been the single body of Orr's power. The more universes Phrobus controls, either directly or by his agents the other dark gods, the more of that power he can draw on. Shifts in balance of power at that extra-universal level can have effects which can be perceived by the gods directly but not by created beings inside the universes, i.e. they change the local landscape.


The point isn't how the universes split, but how each decides who gets to control it. That is done by the beings within each. Phrobus' comment suggests that one decision or cusp influences an entire cable of universes. It may mean that a cable of universe will contain the same choice to be made. I doubt that as that would suggests that every prior choice in all those universes have been the same. Where would the variations be that define a different universe?

No, more likely some interconnection spans the universes. That interconnection drives the slightly different cusps in all the variant universes in that cable Phrobus mentions. How that manifests will be interesting. Will Kenhoden jumping universes set up the variant cusps? Will spirits like Vaijon and others do their fair share of influencing? Will killing universe jumpers for the Dark in one universe improve the odds of another universe defeating the Dark? So would OUR Bahzell draw so much resources from the Dark's reserves that other universes have an easier time?

Lots of possibilities. I can't wait to find out how close to right or woefully wrong my speculation is.
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