Suggestion: Remember the Chull Drivers!

[Michael Portz he/him]

There should be a monument for the poor chull drivers back in Urithuru or Shattered Plains respectively, who make Fourth Bridge (and other barges) possible in the first place.

I imagine they swear a lot, getting all these instructions, without having the slightest idea about and without getting the slightest sensory feedback of Fourth Bridge's actual maneuvers 

 

[rjl]

There job may be weird - but I imagine they're paid a decent wage to do a relatively task.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

10 hours ago, Michael Portz said:

I imagine they swear a lot, getting all these instructions, without having the slightest idea about and without getting the slightest sensory feedback of Fourth Bridge's actual maneuvers 

But they do. The lattice inexplicably gets lighter during turns.

[Karger he/him]

The chull drivers are highly inefficient.  We should switch to mechanized water power.

[Michael Portz he/him]

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

But they do. The lattice inexplicably gets lighter during turns.

That ... sounds worse than no feedback ...  ... 

[+robardin he/him]

They already have an "aluminum clutch" to uncouple and re-couple the "power train" for directionality... I wonder if the next step would be to develop some kind of "fabrial gearing" to add magical leverage to the whole affair, and/or to smooth out the effort involved for rapid changes in direction, elevation, or speed.

Even without mechanical or fabrial gearing, there are Surges that would help here, too. If Rock is a Windrunner who doesn't fight, why not have him stay in Urithiru and help to move those fabrial platforms with Lashes? If making the barge move around is a matter of making the fabrial-linked platform on the other side go in the opposite direction (with some "power loss"), then multiply Lashing the platform down or up would surely speed things up for the barge, right? Maybe he'd only do that in an emergency situation, but when a flight of Heavenly Ones appear on the horizon - this time with a mission to capture or destroy the Fourth Bridge - their suddenly seeing it go from "a bit faster than a ship can sail" to it "flying off as quickly as a Windrunner could go" would be pretty astonishing.

[GudThymes he/him]

9 hours ago, robardin said:

They already have an "aluminum clutch" to uncouple and re-couple the "power train" for directionality... I wonder if the next step would be to develop some kind of "fabrial gearing" to add magical leverage to the whole affair, and/or to smooth out the effort involved for rapid changes in direction, elevation, or speed.

Even without mechanical or fabrial gearing, there are Surges that would help here, too. If Rock is a Windrunner who doesn't fight, why not have him stay in Urithiru and help to move those fabrial platforms with Lashes? If making the barge move around is a matter of making the fabrial-linked platform on the other side go in the opposite direction (with some "power loss"), then multiply Lashing the platform down or up would surely speed things up for the barge, right? Maybe he'd only do that in an emergency situation, but when a flight of Heavenly Ones appear on the horizon - this time with a mission to capture or destroy the Fourth Bridge - their suddenly seeing it go from "a bit faster than a ship can sail" to it "flying off as quickly as a Windrunner could go" would be pretty astonishing.

I like this a lot. It makes me think, would the lattice be resistant to lashings? We know that invested objects resist other forms of investiture. I imagine that since the "thousands" of gemstones are embedded in the lattice that they would extend their resistance to the whole of the lattice? If not then at the minimum the gemstones themselves would resist the lashings, so your lattice could become weightless or be falling in a direction, but the actual gemstones would still retain their weight.

[The Silverlight Scholar]

On 8/12/2020 at 3:20 PM, GudThymes said:

I like this a lot. It makes me think, would the lattice be resistant to lashings? We know that invested objects resist other forms of investiture. I imagine that since the "thousands" of gemstones are embedded in the lattice that they would extend their resistance to the whole of the lattice? If not then at the minimum the gemstones themselves would resist the lashings, so your lattice could become weightless or be falling in a direction, but the actual gemstones would still retain their weight.

A simple way to make it powered, but not totally reliant on lashings would be towould be to just replace the chills in the current set up with boulders that could be lashed sideways as many times as needed to achieve the desired speed.

Of course, this would not be nearly as efficient as just having a half dozen Windrunners flying around lashing the bridge directly. Which brings up the question, why didn't they do that? Are the fabrials that they are currently using more stormlight efficient? Is the amount of stormlight consumed really an issue with Dalinar on board? What do you guys think?

[GudThymes he/him]

2 hours ago, The Silverlight Scholar said:

Of course, this would not be nearly as efficient as just having a half dozen Windrunners flying around lashing the bridge directly. Which brings up the question, why didn't they do that? Are the fabrials that they are currently using more stormlight efficient? Is the amount of stormlight consumed really an issue with Dalinar on board? What do you guys think?

My assumption for why they don't lash the bridge directly is Center of Mass/gravity. We don't see a whole lot of it depicted in the text but we know that Lashing's are really changing the gravitational orientation of an object. So, for an object like a ship, where traditionally the center of mass is low and in the center (the ballast) if you were to lash it then it would likely flip around as it's orientation doesn't match the direction of gravity.

 

Although, if you made an enclosed cube and lashed it in a direction, the objects within would likely retain their downward force, so would they push the lashed object down as well? I would imagine that your suggestion would work, although it would likely require a lot of specifically angled lashings to get it to not tumble through the sky weirdly.

[The Silverlight Scholar]

@GudThymes good point. I hadn't thought about that. Have an upvote!