traveling north

carrlaw at swbell.net · 08 Jun 2010, 01:50 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: carrlaw at swbell.net (carrlaw at swbell.net)
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2010 01:50:16 +0000
Subject: (urth) traveling north
In-Reply-To: <4C0D98BA.80106 at verizon.net>
References: <mailman.1.1275945174.1143.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net><4C0D98BA.80106 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <1679603614-1275961821-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-207799901- at bda214.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>

Given the scale of the wall I have difficulty in conceptualizing it being built post typhon-the thing is enormous, several thousand feet high, thick enough that that the characters can have signicant conversational interaction in hiking through it, and at least 25 miles in diameter.  
I think its a cast off piece of extra-solar technolgy that happened to fit the purpose of a curtain wall.  Recall Baldanders refuting Dr Talos comment about the foresight involved in making the wall encompass so much area.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-----Original Message-----
From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 21:11:22 
To: <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) traveling north

Has anyone suggested that the Wall was built to keep people in? Of course you still have the overkill problem.

But there are any number of reasons why a ruler might keep the main strength of his armies near home, especially when assaults might come from land, air, or sea as well as from within. 

I've wondered about a dome too. But would a space invader really land within the walls when the city still has functioning energy weapons that could destroy the incoming fleet? I'd land some distance away---less far than Ascia---assemble my forces, and then move on the city's defenses. This wall would forestall that. And since it's unsmeltable, presumably it would resist energy weapons.

A large wall also puts its troops well away from the city proper.

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:06:20 -0500
From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) traveling north
Message-ID: <4C0D513C.1090705 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 6/7/2010 1:23 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:

> > Obviously the Wall doesn't stop aerial assault, the Ascians could have 
> > used some flyers that were subsequently destroyed by the Commonwealth 
> > forces. 
>   

Is that really obvious? The thickness of the wall suggests that it's 
purpose is not merely a physical barrier against ground-based assaults. 
Otherwise, if an invading force  over-topped it, the wall would become a 
high-ground from which to launch a more successful assaults on the rest 
of the territory.

The wall might be constructed *primarily* to prevent aerial and 
space-based assaults through some sort of protective dome (which is 
unnecessary in Severian's time). The Ascians might have been far more 
technologically advanced in Typhon's time. Anyway, protecting a city 
with a "mere" wall in Typhon's time strikes me as a bizarre anachronism.

------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Urth Mailing List
To post, write urth at urth.net
Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net