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Mat Cauthon posted:Yeah I always figured the Stone was like this, maybe more smoothly shaped - basically the Superdome but made out of rock. I guess it could've been craggier to more closely resemble a mountain but I'm struggling to recall any descriptions of it that suggested the exterior was that rough. I always pictured the Stone as looking like the Black Fortress in Krull, except not black.
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Sep 13, 2021 14:35
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Yeah I always imagined the stone as unnaturally big and smooth, clearly something wrought by the power and not made by normal means
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Sep 13, 2021 15:54
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Tear is built on a coast at a river mouth, so i always assumed it was completely flat around the city, with the stone being this big, completely polished smooth oval lump rising unnaturally out of it. basically Uluru but smooth and surrounded by little buildings and walls also it would be really funny if the show stuck precisely to RJ's city maps because most of them are just completely nonsensical. heres another version of the bandar eban map, straight from the books  walling the city against the ocean but excluding the river mouth. the only major roads coming out of three separate gates all lined up next to each other on the same wall 
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Sep 13, 2021 16:14
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Hooplah posted:Tear is built on a coast at a river mouth, so i always assumed it was completely flat around the city, with the stone being this big, completely polished smooth oval lump rising unnaturally out of it. basically Uluru but smooth and surrounded by little buildings and walls
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Sep 13, 2021 16:16
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Charlz Guybon posted:Makes it hard for Trollocs to assault the city. meaning no disrespect, captain, but it also makes it hard for traders to get in the city.
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Sep 13, 2021 16:18
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Hooplah posted:meaning no disrespect, captain, but it also makes it hard for traders to get in the city.
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Sep 13, 2021 16:20
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Yet these same factors don't seem to have affected any of the other cities
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Sep 13, 2021 16:48
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Hooplah posted:meaning no disrespect, captain, but it also makes it hard for traders to get in the city. How would it be any easier for traders to enter the city if they instead had to travel along the wall a few miles if there was a gate in the north? The city's location at basically the tip of a peninsula means all (land) traders have to approach from the east anyway. And in a trolloc threatened area, traders probably want to enter the city as soon as possible, instead of walking around it where they are unprotected. So it makes sense not have any gates apart from the east, and you then just need as many gates as traffic flow demands. That said, I don't quite understand why you wouldn't wall in the river mouth at well.
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Sep 13, 2021 16:49
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Anyway I'm a big fan of the cities that are perfect squares, with walls originally built to the perfect size forever as evidenced by all the houses inside butting right up to them and nothing outside whatsoever
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Sep 13, 2021 17:05
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Data Graham posted:Anyway I'm a big fan of the cities that are perfect squares, with walls originally built to the perfect size forever as evidenced by all the houses inside butting right up to them and nothing outside whatsoever If you look at the maps, the more southern cities are all surrounded by unwalled houses, or in Ebou Dar's case, has an entire unwalled city adjacent to it. It does make sense for the settlements in the Borderlands to not grow beyond the walls.
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Sep 13, 2021 17:11
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Data Graham posted:Yet these same factors don't seem to have affected any of the other cities Every other city fell?
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Sep 13, 2021 17:14
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Torrannor posted:If you look at the maps, the more southern cities are all surrounded by unwalled houses, or in Ebou Dar's case, has an entire unwalled city adjacent to it. It does make sense for the settlements in the Borderlands to not grow beyond the walls. Or, in carheins cade, all the unwalled houses are smouldering wrecks
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Sep 13, 2021 17:29
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ChubbyChecker posted:wasn't it just an underground aqueduct for the inner city, and not a river for ships needed for commerce They had a river close enough for trading ships, the Sea Folk wanted some land on it near Caemlyn and it was important enough to Elayne that she didn't want to just give it up.
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Sep 13, 2021 17:40
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Honestly, WoT doesn't go far enough in the other direction. Especially the early books have "slow civilizational decline" as a big theme. We do see abandoned cities (Shadar Logoth) and associated ruins, but where are the cities that have shrunk beyond the city walls, so to speak. Where only a half of the interior is lived in? Or where outer walls have fallen into ruin?
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Sep 13, 2021 17:48
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Torrannor posted:Honestly, WoT doesn't go far enough in the other direction. Especially the early books have "slow civilizational decline" as a big theme. We do see abandoned cities (Shadar Logoth) and associated ruins, but where are the cities that have shrunk beyond the city walls, so to speak. Where only a half of the interior is lived in? Or where outer walls have fallen into ruin? Empires and nations almost never fall through depopulation; the people remain, the rulers just don't control them any more. Remember that at one point someone says there was a time when you could walk from the Spine to the sea and always be inside a kingdom, but now the nations are all drawing inwards and holding less territory with each generation. This decay inevitably begins at the edges, which are furthest away from capital control. The cities that remain inside the shrunken nation remain full because that's where the people from the now abandoned border cities go.
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Sep 13, 2021 18:17
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Historically you do see situations like Rome post collapse where there's 50,000 people living in a city which once hosted a million. Everyone had to spread out because the infrastructure collapsed and couldn't support the same population density. There's not really that same post apocalyptic collapse happening in contemporary WoT, though, it's more of a steady decline.
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Sep 13, 2021 18:30
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CainsDescendant posted:Historically you do see situations like Rome post collapse where there's 50,000 people living in a city which once hosted a million. Everyone had to spread out because the infrastructure collapsed and couldn't support the same population density. There's not really that same post apocalyptic collapse happening in contemporary WoT, though, it's more of a steady decline. That's no different from the decline that I described, really. Everything moves away from the weak places more than it moves towards the strong. The capital remains strongest for longest, but when even it becomes weak all the people who flee now must flee outwards because there's nowhere inwards left to go. Rome was squeezed together, and when the bonds split everything flew apart again. If the decline had continued in Randland the same thing would have happened; it's just that at the time of the story people could still flee inwards.
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Sep 13, 2021 19:17
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Fair enough
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Sep 13, 2021 19:30
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It probably happened that way for many of the fallen nations of Randland. For example, the nation that was north of Cairhien, Hardan, apparently lost enough people that everyone left and the nation vanished.
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Sep 13, 2021 19:45
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But in any case, it does make it less strange that these cities, with walls that are for all we know quite old, haven't hugely outgrown said walls.
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Sep 13, 2021 20:04
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I've thought about it a few times, and that one line from prophecy about "all shall burn in the fire of his eyes" is fantastic.
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Sep 13, 2021 20:38
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in a way it's kind of funny that for all the thought that went into so many details of the setting that one of the 'major' things, the layout of cities and their relation to the map, is kind of an afterthought in some regards. i don't think it really impacts the series in any way, but it's still fun to think about
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Sep 13, 2021 21:16
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Johnny Joestar posted:in a way it's kind of funny that for all the thought that went into so many details of the setting that one of the 'major' things, the layout of cities and their relation to the map, is kind of an afterthought in some regards. I think its something Jordan just wasn't that interested in. What's there is basically enough to work without really taking you out of the story and only gets weird if you really think about it which is probably where he was coming from. Compare that to org charts and backroom politicking which he wrote out for every organization in the series 
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Sep 13, 2021 21:24
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I mean, he describes the cities pretty well so you get a sense of it. Bigger ones feel more crowded, and the Borderlands fortress cities seem a lot more controlled in size and buildings than the rest. You definitely didn't need a not so good map of it to know what the city looked like. Besides Tar Valon, because that one is just funny that he got someone to print it. seaborgium fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 13, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 22:21
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I've never more than glanced at the city maps. They just weren't that important to what was going on. That did mean I missed the Tar Valon joke for too long.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:32
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Ego Trip posted:I've never more than glanced at the city maps. I still don't know what you're talking about.
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Sep 13, 2021 23:38
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I listened to all the books on audiobook, I didn't even realize there was a joke until I showed up here. 
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Sep 13, 2021 23:41
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Tar Valon —> TV —> The Vagina
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Sep 14, 2021 01:18
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latinotwink1997 posted:Tar Valon —> TV —> The Vagina It's more of a vulva  Though it's hard to say whether that's intentional, accidental, subconcious, or reader rorscharch
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Sep 14, 2021 01:48
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Ardlen posted:It probably happened that way for many of the fallen nations of Randland. For example, the nation that was north of Cairhien, Hardan, apparently lost enough people that everyone left and the nation vanished. this, though, is something that doesn't actually happen in reality. states and governments collapse, yes, and settlements are abandoned, but even in extreme cases like the black death, the thirty years war and the post-columbian genocide of the majority of all native americans, abandoned nations have never actually been a thing. even abandoned cities are relatively rare; it's much more common for people to build a new city on top of the ruins of the old one or just keep living in the ruins. as society breaks down though cities become harder to support, but outside of the most inhospitable deserts and the most remote islands there aren't any places on earth that have ever actually been abandoned by humans. these empty landscapes are a common trope in fantasy though and it's probably because tolkien did it in the lord of the rings, but a lot of it is just cargo culting. wheel of time actually does a pretty decent job of evoking a sense of a world with a long history, but the whole emptiness schtick seems like something that was just imitated without understanding why it was so important in lotr. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 14, 2021 03:05
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TheFluff posted:this, though, is something that doesn't actually happen in reality. states and governments collapse, yes, and settlements are abandoned, but even in extreme cases like the black death, the thirty years war and the post-columbian genocide of the majority of all native americans, abandoned nations have never actually been a thing. even abandoned cities are relatively rare; it's much more common for people to build a new city on top of the ruins of the old one or just keep living in the ruins. as society breaks down though cities become harder to support, but outside of the most inhospitable deserts and the most remote islands there aren't any places on earth that have ever actually been abandoned by humans. There's a Dark God and his followers working hard to make it happen. Can't really compare it to reality.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:09
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TheFluff posted:this, though, is something that doesn't actually happen in reality. states and governments collapse, yes, and settlements are abandoned, but even in extreme cases like the black death, the thirty years war and the post-columbian genocide of the majority of all native americans, abandoned nations have never actually been a thing. even abandoned cities are relatively rare; it's much more common for people to build a new city on top of the ruins of the old one or just keep living in the ruins. as society breaks down though cities become harder to support, but outside of the most inhospitable deserts and the most remote islands there aren't any places on earth that have ever actually been abandoned by humans. I mean, you had the literal servant of satan sparking off gigantic wars nonstop, including an invasion so savage it completely destroyed the ability of nations to function causing them to collapse. It felt pretty earnt.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:15
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:I mean, you had the literal servant of satan sparking off gigantic wars nonstop, including an invasion so savage it completely destroyed the ability of nations to function causing them to collapse. It felt pretty earnt. in the ~100 years after 1492 the population of the americas was reduced by somewhere between 80 and 90%. most states did collapse, and entire cultures went functionally extinct in a matter of decades. and yet, i don't think you can describe any area or nation in the americas as empty or abandoned. abandoned cities yes, but more commonly continuous habitation on top of the old population centers (see e.g. mexico city).
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Sep 14, 2021 03:26
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.....yes? Can you maybe think of a few other things going on that we don't have here? Madmen wiping out entire villages? Trolloc raiders? The aforementioned servant of Satan loving with the world every chance he got?
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Sep 14, 2021 03:38
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I might be old-fashioned this way but being able to ascribe all the weird and implausible elements of worldbuilding to "bubbles of evil" and your three main characters literally being magic plot-armored beings with a special term for them in the glossary seems like kind of the opposite of "earnt"
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Sep 14, 2021 03:39
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Data Graham posted:I might be old-fashioned this way but being able to ascribe all the weird and implausible elements of worldbuilding to "bubbles of evil" and your three main characters literally being magic plot-armored beings with a special term for them in the glossary seems like kind of the opposite of "earnt" What does this have to do with the cities failing discussion going on?
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Sep 14, 2021 03:40
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Cairhien did immediately claim these fallen areas, then slowly shrunk their borders as they realized they couldn't support it. So maybe they stopped defending these borders from Trolloc raids, and those people who didn't retreat from the border slowly got whittled away by these attacks. If you look at the Americas from the perspective of the Native Americans, their story is one of retreat and abandonment of their cities from non-stop raids, attacks, and disease.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:59
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Only reason I ever cared about the cities was from playing MUDs in the early 90s. I was like 10 and I just *had* to zmud automap all the zones.
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Sep 14, 2021 04:01
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Or there's the fact that the land was slowly dying from the touch of evil, the nations were having to send armies yearly to fight at the Blight, the imperfect seal on Shayol Ghul which was probably allowing a small but damaging amount of influence on the whole world...
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Sep 14, 2021 04:30
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:.....yes? Can you maybe think of a few other things going on that we don't have here? Madmen wiping out entire villages? Trolloc raiders? The aforementioned servant of Satan loving with the world every chance he got? I have some bad news for you about how settler colonialism worked! 1637: English settlers, working with the Narragansetts and Mohegans, set fire to a fortified Pequot village near the Mystic River in what is now Connecticut. The settlers kill several hundred Pequots. A few escape. Others survive only to be captured and sold into slavery in the West Indies. 1854: Californian settlers kill most of the inhabitants of a Tolowa village and force the rest to go live on a reservation in Oregon. 1779:George Washington is given the name "Town Destroyer" by the Iroquois after he burns down 40 of their villages as reprisal for siding with the British.
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Sep 14, 2021 04:36
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