aeromancer

Has the effect worn off? Do you feel that Wayne currently adds nothing legitimate to any book, and is, in fact getting in everyone's way? Do you feel that maybe Wayne is just living up to his name, just waning from the goodness he was in Alloy of Law to a mere repetitive, one-dimensional character? If not, please don't down-vote me. This is America, I hide beneath the First Amendment, and an army of flame shields. Also, um, kindly stay off the thread so only like-minded people can post? Please? If you do agree with me, join the Wayne Hater thread, and espouse your favorite reasons why you think Wayne should've lost all his goldminds, and be far and teathered off a cliff. Remember, this is the Bands of Mourning thread, so all's fair to spoil. My personal favorite: Wayne, you horrible excuse for a human being. You crashed the wedding of a man who saved your life more times than you can count on your fingers (including regrown ones) with a water tower. There's no excuse for that. Incidentally, petty thievery is a crime. Thievery against your bet friend is also a crime. Just saying. If you are going to say you like Wayne, and rain on my parade (like Wayne himself might), then please for my sanity post a legitimate reason. "I like Wayne." and "He's funny. Ooh, shiny." does not qualify.

The two best video game example that come to mind is HALO: Reach, and FFVII Crisis Core. Both of them end the game with one man holding off an army. Age of Empires Dawn of the Modern World Korea campaign has one too. Maybe chapter 5? I forgot, it's been a while.

Major population centers would still be lait bound, though. Keep in mind, the topic of this thread is merely the amount of resources wasted, not the practicality of using bridgemen. I am not pointing to anyone in particular when I say that, just keep it in mind when replying. On a side note, Sadeas is very, very lucky that fabrials shatter gemstones, else the law of supply would wipe him dry.

An ecosystem with constant highstorms is more favorable for human settlement? Highstorms are a minimum of Class 4 hurricane, judging from the damage they do, and that Kaladin isn't expected to survive one. Constant class 4 hurricanes destroy settlements. Yes, the soil may be more conductive (plants will just get destroyed) but you'd have to expand city by city if you're trying to expand against those conditions. Not to mention mountainous regions, or the fact that you are assuming that the single landmass is the size of a super continent. I must respectfully disagree with your count of fifty million, and will assume, based on the size of the army fielded, two million total instead. 1 man in 20 seems very low in terms of battle-service, but I'm cutting slack here.

Same here. Odium's very nature requires him to destroy things (not Ruin). Same reason why Cultivation is better at seeing the future than, say, Ruin. Welcome to the forums JerleShannara. Airships are awesome.

(Sadeas is an idiot for using cavalry then. ) I stand corrected on the cavalry point, then. I did not mean you. I am sorry for implying that you were insulting me. I merely meant someone who wishes to disagree with the factually correct information that the Rosharian ecosystem cannot support warhorses.

Michael Creighton. All. (Jurassic Park, Sphere, Andromeda Strain, etc.) Except NEXT. That one is horrid, I stopped a couple chapters in.

I suppose Last Stand of Dead Men qualifies... (Skulduggery Pleasant)

@Pathfinder: That's actually not a good example. German military practice had their aces flying not stop, but British pilots were allowed to retire after x number of missions. Germans were stupid about maintaining pilots in general. Heavy cavalry? There is no heavy cavalry. I forgot who, but only one highprince actually uses horses in serious combat. Sadeas uses shock troops to charge across bridges. Missing. The. Point. I don't think anyone will disagree that Sadeas was being more cost effective by using bridgemen, I'm merely pointing out that the sustained losses are impractical on everyone's side, including the Parshendi. On a side note, horses on Roshar make zero sense. There's no way to breed warhorses in the first place if horses are that rare, and the population size isn't high enough. That discussion goes into husbandry and genetics, so do not argue with that point here, go make a topic saying I'm stupid, and I'll respond there.

The cost is actually written in the books if you want to do a side-by-side comparison. I assume it is cheaper to use bridgemen, because Sadeas, while being every expletive in the book (including fictional ones), is not dumb. @DreamEternal: Thanks for the support!

So why do both Dalinar AND Aladar have a larger army than him? Also, these calculation are him trying (but not succeeding) for a third of the gemhearts. If you want him to get half the gemhearts, triple my number. Which is around 50,000, half of the army. Armies do not sustain those kinds of losses, no they do not. Read Mistborn, specifically, well spoilers, so I'll just say in the second book where Ham talks about casualties. Also, point: No, I don't have a point in making this post. I'm hoping I made an egregious error, but even still, potential corpsecount is really high. Someone please ask Brandon about this during the Calamity tour.

My point is still valid...

,,,The point wasn't the body count... Why'd I make that the title? I'm an idiot, thank you. Fact is, in order for Sadeas to be competitive with the rest of the Highprinces in terms of army size, that means that they all must incur similar losses, not necessarily in bridgemen deaths, but in terms of time, and money, which roughly will translate to (at ecohansen's estimates) the equivalent of 250,000 deaths a year. I'm more talking in terms of expended resources. Way of Kings claims the army size is 100,00, by the way! I'm going to update that up top!

I think this is WoB, actually. Otherwise, there would be variants in shardblade weapon types.

If I could get quote confirmation on any corrections, I'll revise my calculation up top, and credit the guy who brought me the quote. Just to note, the ratio is usually 7-to-1, workers needed to soldiers fielded. Of course, with Soulcasters, it's probably less. My point remains that if Sadeas can take these losses, then everyone else could as well.

"Kaladin had not been assigned to Bridge Four by chance. Out of all the bridge crews, Bridge Four had the highest casualty rate. That was particularly notable, considering that average bridge crews often lost one-third to one-half of their number on a single run." - Way of Kings That's one way to calculate, the other is that half the bridges went down every run they were under attack. The point isn't that there were 5,000,000 million casualties the point was that 5,000,000 million casualties could be sustained, judging from the amount Sadeas took, which is ludicrous. Also, they still kept fighting skirmishes with each other the entire time adding to the body count. Evidence by Kaladin's backstory!

...(I started a thread on redshifts)... Bendalloy bubbles have been juggled around for as long as I can remember. There definetly is something there, but Brandon's RAFOed a lot of questions that would tell us more. Um, wormholes won't work. For a lot of reasons. Event horizon. Spaghettification. Seriously, Interstellar is so off the mark with that stuff it's ridiculous Ignore my rant. Event horizon + Bendalloy bubble, hmmm. No, terrible screw-with-spacetime idea.

IMPORTANT: Due to feedback, the original number of 525,000 dead bridgemen total has been revised. So ... bridgemen. The Stormlight Archive version of redshirts. (If you don't know what a redshirt is, that's OK.) But how many of them actually died in the books? Well, there were 40 bridge crews, and half of those went, per run. Each bridge crew had an average of 35-40 bridgemen. Let's say 35. We also know that on the good runs the loss was between a third to a half. That's an average of 41% casualty per good run, say around 50% casualty rates on all runs. Every year, according to the conversation between Shallan and Adolin, 150 chasmfiends were spotted. Sadeas is very aggressive, so let's say he went on a third of them. So, 50 runs a year. 20 crews x 35 members x 50 runs x 50% casualty rate = 17,500 dead bridgemen per year, or 175,000 total (ten years) Oh, and that's just Sadeas. Oh, and that's just his bridgemen, not even his actual army. Meaning, supposed they all were trained, the Parshendi seemingly had no problem keeping him, and nine other armies, some larger them him at bay during a war of attrition. Way of Kings claim that the Alethkar army is well over 100,000. The bridgemen corpses are under 200,000. From Sadeas. Anyone care to correct my math? Math updated. Correct my new math.

Sword is the default state of a shardblade because they were patterned after the Honorblades. Sylphrena would become a sword.

Wrinkle in time, much? Yeah, that sounds plausible. Technically light should exceed light because it's traveling in separate "pocket dimension" these bubbles create. These bubbles are definitely pocket dimensions if they mess with time - which I'm still not convinced that they do. What else than? Gravity, perhaps.

"Any sufficiently explained magic is indistinguishable from technology"

My main problem is that why would the person observing the effect have such a question. If she knows enough about physics to know about redshift, then she should also know that the speed of light is constant under all observations. On second thought - I'd say you'd have to manipulate space to achieve a redshift, but time is space (sort of), so maybe a redshft should be achieved. I need clarification from someone who does these kinds of things for a living. Would creating a pocket dimension resulting in a photon being able to cross a distance faster than another photon cause said photon to have a different wavelength?

I understand completely. Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose.

This seems so much better suited to a large scale RTS. Perhaps something in the Command & Conquer venue, using gems in place of stormlight, and giving every highprince a faction? (Red Alert 2 seems like a good prototype.) Regardless, I can probably lend a hand or two in coding. Largely depends on what language you'd like to use.

Now, a redshift is a way of measuring a direction of a traveling star. This is because light comes in tasty flavors called spectrum, like the seven colors of the rainbow. Now, the reason red is on the inside is because it has the shortest spectrum (or actually red has the shortest spectrum because it is on the inside.) Therefore, red has the lowest frequency, and thus the highest wavelength. A star moving away from you experiences a redshift, meaning the object appears more red. Slightly. So, let's say a photon travels across a hall. Another one tries to on the same parallel track, leaving at the same time, but is in fact smashes through Wayne's bubble. (Pesky Wayne.) So, which one reaches the opposite side first? It's a tie. Lightspeed is a constant. Hence, no redshift. Even Wayne cannot mess with that. However, theoretically seeing as the photon going through the bubble is "sped-up", the photon should experience a negative redshift, aka a blueshift. Alright. I got this out into the open. Now someone with a Ph.D. in Physics make me eat a nice helping of humble pie.