RTH Official Snippet #3

Howard,

Peter Z's reaction to the missing PAAF officers in those snippets of the 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is why I am talking about RFC's problem of "breaking the readers suspension of disbelief".

RFC needs to be a few sentences addressing the PAAF either being there or not in snippets #2 & #3 scene.

Once you notice this issue, it undermines much of the vision RFC is trying to present of a competent Ternathian military.

The PAAF being missing from that 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is a classic bone-head newbie mistake by people who don't think their #2 stinks.

And while I will note that competent military's do make those kind of mistakes, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora

.
A former Delta Force commander, using the pen name "Dalton Fury", who fought at Tora Bora, wrote that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on or around December 16, 2001.
.
Fury gives three reasons for why he believes bin Laden was able to escape:
(1) the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area,
(2) NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area, and
(3) over-reliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters. Fury states that, as it was Ramadan, the Afghan forces would usually leave the battlefield in the evenings to break their day-long fasts. He suggested this allowed the al-Qaeda forces a chance to regroup, reposition, or escape.[17]

Sadly, unlike reality, fiction has to make sense for the reader.

Mil-tech,

Perhaps the Ternath Army should be expected to make
one "classic bonehead newbie mistake" at the start
of a major war.
Perhaps this is it, and it is good that they did it and
got over with it so quickly.

But as for Reader Understanding,
some Readers are always going to misunderstand,
no matter how precise and specific the Writer thinks
that he has been.
Other Readers will get it (the "it" that *I* get), as
in this case I note that Don n7axw agrees with me.

Chan G might have had ten meetings, and summoned the
Salby officers to nine of them. What are the odds that
W&P would show the tenth meeting, which lacked them?
Odds might be very high, if W&P had a reason to show
us-the-Readers such a meeting! Perhaps they wanted to
introduce us to the Division Officers, and not allow
(or invite) us to guess that chan S had become a part
of the Division's staff.

Be that as it may, I did miss the Salby officers at
that meeting (I never said otherwise), but I am not
as upset as some other that they missed this one.
They are all still at Salby; they can all meet later.

Or perhaps W&P chose to show chan G as less than perfect.
Perhaps the Ternath officers are too arrogant to admit
outsiders to their councils.

HTM, trying to keep my patience with those who overlook
things, and remembering that that group includes me

Mil-tech bard wrote:Howard,

Peter Z's reaction to the missing PAAF officers in those snippets of the 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is why I am talking about RFC's problem of "breaking the readers suspension of disbelief".

RFC needs to be a few sentences addressing the PAAF either being there or not in snippets #2 & #3 scene.

Once you notice this issue, it undermines much of the vision RFC is trying to present of a competent Ternathian military.

The PAAF being missing from that 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is a classic bone-head newbie mistake by people who don't think their #2 stinks.

And while I will note that competent military's do make those kind of mistakes, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora

.
A former Delta Force commander, using the pen name "Dalton Fury", who fought at Tora Bora, wrote that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on or around December 16, 2001.
.
Fury gives three reasons for why he believes bin Laden was able to escape:
(1) the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area,
(2) NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area, and
(3) over-reliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters. Fury states that, as it was Ramadan, the Afghan forces would usually leave the battlefield in the evenings to break their day-long fasts. He suggested this allowed the al-Qaeda forces a chance to regroup, reposition, or escape.[17]

Sadly, unlike reality, fiction has to make sense for the reader.

Howard,

Regards your two points below --

I find that you have overlooked two (2) points,
one of which supports your reasoning *strongly,*
while the other, I deem, refutes it.

The First Point is the distance to Kelsayr through
Traisum itself, given as about 10,000 miles.
This increases the Total Distance via Kelsayr to
Nairsom to almost 20,000 miles, more than half of
which is within Traisum.

The distance via Karys is still 4,056 Miles from Salby.

However, the Second Point is:
The route from Sharona via Kelsayr to Nairsom,
**Does Not Proceed By Way Of Fort Salby!**

You missed a third point that overrules your second.

The Voice Network, and the fact that a Voice shortage favors the shortest land and water gap route.

Specifically, the huge water gap in the Kelsayr chain at Traisum makes the Karys chain through Ft. Salby the main and most rapid Voice transmission route to Sharona for most of the universes up chain from the Kelsayr/Traisum gate fort.

Yes, but that's pointless right now. Salby is currently the end of the line of Sharonian-held territory. There's nobody beyond it to communicate with right now. Once they've reconquered both sides of the loop Salby will certainly be on the better communications path, but that's months away at best.

Chan Gerith is planning to leave Salby, cross the Atlantic, and take a different portal to leave the universe he's in. I wouldn't automatically assume chan Skithrik (or anyone else at Salby) is intimately familiar with the territory of a universe he has never been (as far as we know) and has no responsibility for. Most of the distance on the other part of the loop is still help by Sharonians and has trains, so the territory he actually needs to know about is a couple of universes away. The closer they get to it, the better the information ought to be. Chan Skithrik might know nothing more than is on the maps. He may well have seen the maps more times than anyone on chan Gerith's staff, which could be useful, but it's equally possible some lower-level person at Salby is the real expert, or as close as they have. And since this is the very first meeting even discussing going the other route, they may not need detailed information at this one.

Chan Gerith is planning on going away from Salby to a place nobody at Salby probably has any experience in. We don't know at this point if Salby or the entrance portal of their universe is closer to the planned line of advance. Salby may do something to supply chan Gerith (or not; depleting the supplies of their most forward point doesn't seem like a good idea), and certainly chan Gerith is leaving behind part of his force to hold Salby, but Salby itself probably has little to offer the offensive. Letting chan Skithrik work on the repairs and defenses of his fort may well be more important than having him sit in meetings about an offense he's unconnected to.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Howard,

Regards your two points below --

I find that you have overlooked two (2) points,
one of which supports your reasoning *strongly,*
while the other, I deem, refutes it.

The First Point is the distance to Kelsayr through
Traisum itself, given as about 10,000 miles.
This increases the Total Distance via Kelsayr to
Nairsom to almost 20,000 miles, more than half of
which is within Traisum.

The distance via Karys is still 4,056 Miles from Salby.

However, the Second Point is:
The route from Sharona via Kelsayr to Nairsom,
**Does Not Proceed By Way Of Fort Salby!**

You missed a third point that overrules your second.

The Voice Network, and the fact that a Voice shortage favors the shortest land and water gap route.

Specifically, the huge water gap in the Kelsayr chain at Traisum makes the Karys chain through Ft. Salby the main and most rapid Voice transmission route to Sharona for most of the universes up chain from the Kelsayr/Traisum gate fort.

Mil-tech bard wrote:Howard,

Peter Z's reaction to the missing PAAF officers in those snippets of the 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is why I am talking about RFC's problem of "breaking the readers suspension of disbelief".

RFC needs to be a few sentences addressing the PAAF either being there or not in snippets #2 & #3 scene.

Once you notice this issue, it undermines much of the vision RFC is trying to present of a competent Ternathian military.

The PAAF being missing from that 3rd Dragoon's staff meeting is a classic bone-head newbie mistake by people who don't think their #2 stinks.

And while I will note that competent military's do make those kind of mistakes, see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora

.
A former Delta Force commander, using the pen name "Dalton Fury", who fought at Tora Bora, wrote that bin Laden escaped into Pakistan on or around December 16, 2001.
.
Fury gives three reasons for why he believes bin Laden was able to escape:
(1) the US mistakenly thought that Pakistan was effectively guarding the border area,
(2) NATO allies refused to allow the use of air-dropped GATOR mines, which would have helped seal bin Laden and his forces inside the Tora Bora area, and
(3) over-reliance on native Afghan military forces as the main force deployed against bin Laden and his fighters. Fury states that, as it was Ramadan, the Afghan forces would usually leave the battlefield in the evenings to break their day-long fasts. He suggested this allowed the al-Qaeda forces a chance to regroup, reposition, or escape.[17]

Sadly, unlike reality, fiction has to make sense for the reader.

Much less dramatic decisions than the ones that let the Spartan navy destroy he Athenian navy.

With the following bkwormlisa --

bkwormlisa wrote:Yes, but that's pointless right now. Salby is currently the end of the line of Sharonian-held territory. There's nobody beyond it to communicate with right now. Once they've reconquered both sides of the loop Salby will certainly be on the better communications path, but that's months away at best.

Chan Gerith is planning to leave Salby, cross the Atlantic, and take a different portal to leave the universe he's in. I wouldn't automatically assume chan Skithrik (or anyone else at Salby) is intimately familiar with the territory of a universe he has never been (as far as we know) and has no responsibility for. Most of the distance on the other part of the loop is still help by Sharonians and has trains, so the territory he actually needs to know about is a couple of universes away. The closer they get to it, the better the information ought to be. Chan Skithrik might know nothing more than is on the maps. He may well have seen the maps more times than anyone on chan Gerith's staff, which could be useful, but it's equally possible some lower-level person at Salby is the real expert, or as close as they have. And since this is the very first meeting even discussing going the other route, they may not need detailed information at this one.

Chan Gerith is planning on going away from Salby to a place nobody at Salby probably has any experience in. We don't know at this point if Salby or the entrance portal of their universe is closer to the planned line of advance. Salby may do something to supply chan Gerith (or not; depleting the supplies of their most forward point doesn't seem like a good idea), and certainly chan Gerith is leaving behind part of his force to hold Salby, but Salby itself probably has little to offer the offensive. Letting chan Skithrik work on the repairs and defenses of his fort may well be more important than having him sit in meetings about an offense he's unconnected to.

You are showing that you don't understand the concepts of priority military transmissions and logistical resupply.

From the first encounter with the Arcanians and the Sharonan PAAF, the Karys chain would have been the one where all the military readiness reports would have flowed from Nairsom, Resym and Lashai through the Ft Salby portal because they travelled faster that way.

Anything needed logistically on a priority basis for those same PAAF Kelsayr chain portal fort garrisons in that period would have routed through Ft. Salby.

Ft. Salby is/was the critical PAAF communication/logistical node for both the Karys and Kelsayr universe chains as a result.

Thus Regiment-Captain Chan Skrithik would be by default be the on-the-spot expert on Nairsom, Resym and Lashai PAAF logistics for the 3rd Dragoon's General Captain to draw on.

Which in turn reinforces my point about the lack of Regiment-Captain Chan Skrithik or his executive officer in snippets #2 & #3 being a "Too-any Battle Dragons" level mistake.

This is from snippet #3 which RFC posted on General Captain chan Geraith --

“That’s essentially my own conclusion, Sir,” chan Gayrahn said. “Well, mine and Master-Armsman chan Vornos’. All indications are that Harshu is a determined, ruthless commander — more than ruthless enough to accept casualties and losses as the price of accomplishing his mission. Yet he hasn’t even tried to attack the rail line behind us.”

“Perhaps he simply doesn’t realize how important it is,” chan Isail suggested, and chan Geraith nodded. One of the things he most valued about chan Isail was the chief of staff’s hardheaded pragmatism. Chan Geraith’s own tendency was to think in the most aggressive terms possible. Aggressively enough, in fact, that he sometimes found himself badly in need of chan Isail’s willingness to challenge (or at least critically examine) his underlying assumptions.

“I think it’s entirely possible — even probable — that he doesn’t have a clear grasp of how much we can move, or how quickly we can move it, on rails,” the division-captain conceded now. “In fact, I don’t see how it could be any other way. They had to be as ignorant of our capabilities as we were of theirs when they set out to attack us, and Harshu wouldn’t have been so quick to let Banchu and the work crews go if he’d realized how badly he could hurt us by just hanging on to them.”

Please note that RFC is trying to point out we have a
1. Aggressive-competent 3rd Dragoon's commanding officer
2. With a cautious-competent chief of staff, plus
3. A long term senior NCO -- Master-Armsman chan Vornos -- who wiped the General-Captain's nose as a junior officer, to balance his aggressiveness with hard nosed logistical reality.

These are really powerful military stereotypes used to create a "fill in the cultural background" effect with the reading audience, who are somewhat familiar with those stereotypes from media war movie images.

This triple helping of "authorial competence creation" crashes and burns spectacularly given the absence of the PAAF Regiment-Captain of his chief logistical representative in the meeting.

Especially since Master-Armsman chan Vornos would have been able to draw on a certain snot-nosed junior officer's aggressive & logistically stupid mistakes early in his career to make his point.

No, I did not miss that.
Like bkwormlisa, I deem that it does not matter - at
at this time. ("at" & "has" duplicated for clarity)
It will matter at some future time (once Sharona has
has re-opened that loop).
More in my next post.

HTM

Mil-tech bard wrote:Howard,

Regards your two points below --

I find that you have overlooked two (2) points,
one of which supports your reasoning *strongly,*
while the other, I deem, refutes it.

The First Point is the distance to Kelsayr through
Traisum itself, given as about 10,000 miles.
This increases the Total Distance via Kelsayr to
Nairsom to almost 20,000 miles, more than half of
which is within Traisum.

The distance via Karys is still 4,056 Miles from Salby.

However, the Second Point is:
The route from Sharona via Kelsayr to Nairsom,
**Does Not Proceed By Way Of Fort Salby!**

You missed a third point that overrules your second.

The Voice Network, and the fact that a Voice shortage favors the shortest land and water gap route.

Specifically, the huge water gap in the Kelsayr chain at Traisum makes the Karys chain through Ft. Salby the main and most rapid Voice transmission route to Sharona for most of the universes up chain from the Kelsayr/Traisum gate fort.

Mil-tech, are you assuming that the Voice-Network
route from Traisum thru Nairsom and Resym to Lashai
was already established, in good working order, and
regularly used, by the time that 1000 Carthos took the
Traisum-Nairsom Gate, and thus broke that route?

Textev of the SPA meeting during which the attack on
Chalgyn was first announced on Sharona (on or near
page 445 of HG, IIRC) shows that SPA HQ did *not*
know that Traisum and Resym both linked to Nairsom!
The Karys Chain was not yet known to be linked to
the Kelsayr Chain - by folks at home on Sharona.

Chan Skithrik at Salby would have gotten the word
earlier, of course. Did he get it early enough to
set up and take control of the Loop Voice-links?
If he had, then had he done so soon enough to get
and learn useful data from it?
I (& bkwormlisa, I presume) am reasoning from the
premise that at least one of those answers is "no."
Assertions that contradict our reasoning, seem to
be based on the premise that both answers are "yes."

For chan S to be *that* knowledgeable about Resym
and even Lashai, seems to require that Salby had been
receiving and comprehending such data for significant
time. Bkw.. and I (an least I) reason that the amount
of time he had to become any kind of an expert on that
data, is "less than" significant.
Therefore we discount it.
It is not because either of us is unaware of that Loop,
or of the distances within it.

Fort Salby **will be**
"the critical PAAF communication/ logistical node for
both the Karys and Kelsayr universe chains as a result"
of the 10,000 mile distance from Seaport to Kelsayr and
the 4000 miles across Kelsayr to Lashai.
I deny that it **is** and **was**.
It *is* not "now" (book time) because Arcana broke it.
It *was* not, for lack of time between discovery and
breaking for Sharona to get much use out of it.

HTM

Mil-tech bard wrote:
{snip - htm}

From the first encounter with the Arcanians and the Sharonan PAAF, the Karys chain would have been the one where all the military readiness reports would have flowed from Nairsom, Resym and Lashai through the Ft Salby portal because they travelled faster that way.

Anything needed logistically on a priority basis for those same PAAF Kelsayr chain portal fort garrisons in that period would have routed through Ft. Salby.

Ft. Salby is/was the critical PAAF communication/logistical node for both the Karys and Kelsayr universe chains as a result.

Thus Regiment-Captain Chan Skrithik would be by default be the on-the-spot expert on Nairsom, Resym and Lashai PAAF logistics for the 3rd Dragoon's General Captain to draw on.

Which in turn reinforces my point about the lack of Regiment-Captain Chan Skrithik or his executive officer in snippets #2 & #3 being a "Too-any Battle Dragons" level mistake.

It occurred to me over the weekend (when I am cut off
from computers) that our evidence that chan S, and
his people, were not at that particular meeting,
is only that they were not mentioned as being there.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

The officers at that meeting were mentioned one at a
time, as they were spoken to, or spoke,
not all in one list together.
There may have been officers present,
who were not mentioned.
Chan S or Markan, or some of their subordinates,
might have been there after all.

HTM

Mil-tech bard wrote:

{snip - htm}

Which in turn reinforces my point about the
lack of Regiment-Captain Chan Skrithik or
his executive officer in snippets #2 & #3 being
a "Too-any Battle Dragons" level mistake.