as_sporkive | Brisingr Chapter 30: The Laughing Dead (Reply)

Jonathan Dean wrote in antishurtugal, 2017-08-27 19:03:00

MOOD: tired face

tired

Brisingr Chapter 30: The Laughing Dead

So, here's another chapter of Roran doing nothing relevant to the story or his character development, and also some very bad military fiction to boot. The raiding narrative is one that could have had some value if it advanced the plot (if they found Galbatorix's plans, for example) or forced Roran to undergo some character changes (horrors of war, harsh reality of guerrilla warfare, etc). Sadly, though, this didn't happen.

The chapter opens with Roran looking through a "latticework of willow branches", two hundred yards away from where the supply caravan has camped.

kris_norge has already pointed out that this is an unlikely position for an ambush: horses are large animals, not prone to sneaking around or keeping quiet, and the willow branches aren't likely to hide you very well. Though, to be fair, towards the end dusk I could see some willow trees being able to hide a rider from site; I do a lot of driving in the early mornings and late evenings, and there's a point where the angle of the sun casts deep shadows that really make seeing anything far off difficult. Theoretically, a small group of riders could probably advance to within 200 yards of a camp, terrain and vegetation permitting, but I doubt that 30 riders could get so close.

Paolini is also mistaken when he has Roran decide that the Empire's position is a poor one: a high earth bank runs at a right angle from the river, and the convoy's wagons have been drawn up in a semi-circle so that a defensive barrier is formed from the earth bank to the river. I would have drawn the convey up on the other side of the bank, mirroring the camp, so that no one can get above me and loose arrows down into my camp. But, all in all, it's not a terrible location.

Most of Roran's logic is that there's no easy way to retreat from the position if you're ambushed, but retreat isn't the first thing you need to do when ambushed, it's defend. Any line of retreat is worthless if you can't hold the enemy off until they withdraw far enough away for you to make a retreat. Offered a choice between a campsite that is easily defended in the event of an ambush and a campsite that would allow an easy retreat, I would chose a defensible location any day. Trying to run from an ambush will only get you killed.

Roran, in spite of being told that there aren't enough magicians for one to guard every caravan and that there are no detectable magical traps, decides that it must be an ambush. This seems to be based on his gut feeling and faulty assessment of the camp, but sometimes gut feelings do turn out to be true, even if there's no discernible logic behind them.

Side note: was Carn checking for traps or magical defences for a couple of miles out, or was he merely checking the camp itself? Because, if I had a mage with my convoy, I'd have them set up a ring of wards a good way away from the camp so that we could be alerted if a large party of riders came towards us. With the highly specific nature of Paolini's magic, it should be easy enough to create a spell that sets off an alert only when large numbers of men approach. These may even be able to be made invisible to any enemy mage because of how the magic works. "Alert me with the location of any approaching body of men or horses greater than one and their number by telling me in my ear, and be invisible to any magician other than myself." Sounds pretty airtight to me.

Anyway, Martland agrees with Roran that something seems to be wrong, but is full of bravado and decides to charge instead. First off, why are they charging a fortified camp? It would be much easier to hit them in the morning when they were breaking down the camp or when they were on the road. If your force is smaller than your enemy's, then you absolutely shouldn't attack them where they're strongest. Which, in this case, is in a camp protected by nature and by wagons.

Secondly, if you suspect that there's a trap waiting to be sprung, why charge in blindly? Why not send ten of your men with bows around and up to the top of the earth shelf so that they can rain arrows down on your enemies while they're distracted by your other men advancing in good order towards your camp? They can either use fire arrows to set fire to the camp and the wagons, trapping the enemy, or advance loosing normal arrows from behind the cover of a rank of spearmen with shields, harassing the enemy and drawing them out. If you wanted, you could send only 5 men to the top of the bank and mount the other 5 ready to counter any charge from the Empire's soldiers.

But, no, instead they all charge into the enemy camp like idiots. Horses are big animals, and they're also surprisingly fragile ones as well, and are easily spooked. YOU DO NOT PUT A BLINDINGLY BRIGHT LIGHT IN THE AIR JUST BEFORE YOU CHARGE IN ON HORSES. The horses will panic, and they will most likely throw some of you before they can be brought under control. Perhaps they were specially trained to deal with a magical flare/flashbang hybrid suddenly appearing in the sky above them, but unless it's specifically mentioned, I don't believe it happened. What this means for the Varden raiders is that a large number of them would currently be unable to perform a charge, which would give the enemy plenty of time to react to them.

Another thing you don't want to do with horses is charge them across unknown terrain in poor light, where holes, rocks, branches and logs could easily be hiding and cause a horse to stumble and fall. It also makes judging the right time to jump the wagon tongue and into the circle of wagons difficult. Once in there, you need to bring the horse to a standstill before it runs into a tent, a fire or a man. A high speed impact with any of these will send your horse to the ground, possibly seriously injuring it, and putting a horse into a tent or campfire at any speed will make the horse hard to ride for a period of time.

There's a further issue with riding all your horses into the wagon circle: there's very little room for a horse to move once inside it. Between the men, the tents and the oxen (at least two for every wagon. If we assume 10 wagons, that's twenty oxen) there is going to be very little room to move, which means that you're at a disadvantage. While a horse might give you a height advantage and a trained warhorse could attack as well, a still horse is far more vulnerable to an attack, and so are you. You can easily be pulled off your horse, as Roran is, and your horse just becomes a massive block of meat for the enemy to cut away at.

So, now they've jumped inside the wagon fort and have begun to attack the Empire's soldiers. Roran decides to thrust out with his hammer rather than immediately crushing his first opponent's head, preferring to take the risk of the soldier getting his shield up or ducking away from the second blow than killing him straight out. He then fights with another soldier, somehow managing to break his sword hand, despite the fact the soldier would be attacking at a faster speed than Roran and might possibly have a shield - or else be attacking as though he did have a shield which, if I understand correctly, would not put his hand on a good line for being smashed. In any case, Roran dispatches this second attacker with a cruel blow to the sternum and is then pulled off his horse.

AS it turns out, the first soldier Roran killed on his second blow, which should have crushed his skull or, if not, then at least knocked him out. He's somehow still alive and conscious enough to drag Roran off his horse and begin to choke him. Can anyone say "editor fail"?

"Tensing his neck to keep the soldier from crushing the life out of him", Roran manages to draw his dagger and stab his attacker through his mail and padding deep enough that it should have killed him. Apart from the fact that I'm 99% sure that tensing your neck won't prevent someone from choking you to death, I can't believe that Roran could have driven his dagger through the soldier's mail, gambeson and ribs deep enough to make any real difference to his situation. Mail wasn't worn because it looked good, it was worn because it worked well as armour. From such a restricted position, Roran wouldn't be able to use his apparently above normal strength to a degree where he could pull off that feat.

At this point Roran realises that these men are the Laughing Dead and manages to stab through the mail and gambeson up into the soldier's armpit, which causes a mortal wound that doesn't seem to slow the soldier down. It's already been pointed out that this isn't how biology works by many other people, so I won't elaborate here except to say that between a stab through, at the very least, his lungs and how into his brachial artery, the Empire soldier should be weakening and losing consciousness rapidly. Roran should be able to free his neck of the man's hands or buck him off. He certainly shouldn't have to rely on a one in a million blind stab that managed to penetrate the soldier's nose at exactly the right angle to penetrate the brain.

Oddly, despite having been the first of his men into the enemy camp and specifically driving towards the center, Roran doesn't find any enemy soldiers near enough to give him trouble while he recovers from being choked and having his head knocked hard against the ground. Given that they were outnumbered by the Empire soldiers and wagoneers, Roran should have found himself under attack by someone before he was fully recovered.

Once he's recovered, Roran retrieves his hammer and picks up a spear in his "shield hand". You can fight two handed with a spear and shield, but that requires both hands and you mostly can't be holding onto the shield at the same time. Holding onto a shield and the shield would be awkward at best, and would also require Roran to drop his hammer or put it in his belt before he could use the spear, losing a few critital seconds at the beginning of any offense or defense. Roran, however, doesn't seem to do this. It's not until after he stabs the second soldier he attacked through the eye and thrown the spear at third soldier that Roran slips his hammer into his belt.

Taking up a bow, Roran begins to loose arrows at the soldiers fighting the Varden. This is pretty dangerous. The light above is blinding, which would interfere with his ability to concentrate and would also throw everything into stark contrast, making it difficult to distinguish between targets and judge distance and range. Further, even at such short range, the chaos of the melee would prevent anyone from hitting their chosen target 100% of the time: Roran is going to be accidentally hitting some of his own men, who are not going to appreciate it afterwards if they even survive.

Roran notes that "at least five" of the Varden have died or been badly injured enough to put them out of the battle and, though he can't work out an exact count, the Empire's soldiers still outnumber them. He thinks that they could tear the raiders apart with their bare hands before the Varden could hack them all to pieces. Hyperbole, for sure, but a close enough assessment of the situation with both sides armed. Which begs the question: how do the Varden win? They should be swarmed, each man having to deal with at least one opponent, and the others dealing with two or three. Those fighting multiple opponents would fall quickly, freeing up those soldiers to gang up on other Varden raiders. The Varden fighting single opponents are more likely to die than their opponents, based on Paolini's internal logic, so the Varden really don't stand a chance. They should all be dead in short order.

Meeting up with Carn, Roran manages to help three other Varden soldiers kill 8 of the Laughing Dead, who feel no pain, tire slower than ordinary humans and can only be killed quickly by piercing the heart or damaging the brain. I think it's unlikely in the extreme that only one of the five Varden raiders died, and that none of the others was badly wounded. According to the internal logic of Paolini's world, Roran's group should have won a Pyrrhic victory at best, or more likely all been killed. But, Roran is one of Paolini's pet characters, and so they come off with only minor wounds and losses.

At this point Roran begins to rally some of the raiders and comes up with a brilliant strategy: push the Empire soldiers into the river. Which, of course, they manage without any real problems. Twelve of the Varden are still mounted, but there's not enough room for them to make a charge, and all they can rely on is walking into the soldiers and pushing them. The problem with this is that they're up against soldiers armed with spears and who have no fear. Even William Marshal couldn't shift determined infantry with a full charge, so what chance do the Varden have at breaking a formation made up of men incapable of running away from them? All the Varden horses should be wounded or dead if they tried to push the Empire soldiers and, without superior numbers, the Varden don't have the capability to push the Empire soldiers into the river. The opposite is more likely to happen.

The Empire soldiers are finally driven into the river and killed in a manner that "horrified" Roran, even though we'll never see any evidence of that. The grisly deed done, they return to the wagons and Martland is attacked by a soldier they thought was dead. I can buy Martland being able to kill his attacker - adrenaline is a funny thing and what people will do in the heat of the moment is unpredictable - but I can't believe that he was able to remain standing for much longer afterwards or successfully ward off medical attention. Losing your hand is not a minor wound: it's a lethal wound if not treated quickly, and even with quick treatment there's a relatively high chance of infection and death afterwards. It's also not reasonable for a military man to waive the opportunity to have his hand reattached. Any man as dedicated to fighting the Empire as Martland is said to be would kill for the chance to avoid permanent maiming and loss of his ability to fight. I think Martland only refused to be healed so that Paolini could get rid of him without killing him off, so that Roran could be set up for the insubordination chapter.

Finally, after all this effort, they merely record the type and quantity of the supplies being transported, kill all the oxen and burn everything. There's no resupply for the group or using spare horses as pack animals to bring badly needed supplies to the Varden. It's all just a needless waste.
This whole chapter is just a clutter of ideas Paolini has had that he never examines beyond the surface level, and is unable to bring to their natural conclusion. The Laughing Dead can't work they way Paolini writes them, but the way he does write them means that they should have won the battle. He puts the Empire's camp in an imperfect, but still quite strong position, and then calls it a poor one, but does not exploit the real weakness of the camp during the battle. Paolini has clearly not done any research on horses or warfare, and he ignores the likely actions of various characters purely for a future plot point.

18 comments

[1]

torylltales
August 27 2017, 21:45:36
Oh man, the military genius on display. We were all told about what a prodigy Paolini is with languages and writing, but they never mentioned that he was a tactical genius as well.

[1A]

kris_norge
August 28 2017, 05:02:36
I'm trying to imagine Paolini as a general in medieval times....

[1A1]

torylltales
August 28 2017, 09:39:17
Alternate history: Paolini's military decisions are the reason the Picts completely disappeared from the British isles. Paolini was fighting on the side of the Picts.

[1A1A]

Anonymous
August 29 2017, 03:52:55
He must have been at Culloden too...

[2]

anontu
August 27 2017, 23:19:48
The five Varden losses reminds me of how when I was little, I said that my fictional space army had already lost ten men in a massive war against the baddies.

According to the internal logic of Paolini's world, Roran's group should have won a Pyrrhic victory at best, or more likely all been killed. But, Roran is one of Paolini's pet characters, and so they come off with only minor wounds and losses

It's not like Paolini hasn't done it before. The first time these guys are introduced the Varden and Surda barely won, so he had it in him.

[2A]

hergrim
August 28 2017, 06:30:52
I forgot about that. That makes this chapter even worse: the Varden in that chapter outnumbered the LD several times, had heavy cavalry with plenty of room to maneuver and a couple of hundred Kull, and they still nearly lost.

Paolini really doesn't like remembering anything he's already written, does he?

[2A1]

thegharialguy
August 28 2017, 19:03:31
Presumably these were the drunken screw up laughing dead that Galbatorix is ashamed of and didn't want them taking part in any of the real battles. All of them were also super high during this fight and suddenly thought swimming in armour would be a fantastic idea.

[2A2]

vorpal_tongue
August 30 2017, 02:20:38
IIRC, it was 300 swords...men (for lack of a better term) VS 1000 mixed forces, which includes archers, cavalry and Super-Urgals. Losses: 300 LD and up to 700-800 Varden. More than double what the LD had. Here there's, what, 30 Varden VS how many LD? And the Varden didn't know they were LD, just like before.

They should have gotten curb-stomped.

[3]

theepistler
August 28 2017, 07:01:34
Oh gods, this chapter. Not being a tactician I didn't really pick up on most of what you talked about here. What I picked up on instead was Roran's sudden transformation from regular guy to super soldier FOR NO REASON. The number of new skills he suddenly has in this chapter are absolutely ridiculous. Trick riding (on a horse with no training). Archery. Hand-to-hand combat. Fighting from horseback. Spear-throwing. Using a shield.

Who taught him all that? When did he get the training? Back at the farm while he was hoeing turnips? Seriously, who the hell is this guy and what has he done with the character we met in the previous book? When did Paolini decide to turn him into Mr Badass when he used to be a regular dude with no special abilities other than random speechifying? This book is nothing but wall-to-wall character assassination. Literally everyone turns into a Sue who wasn't one already, including Nasuada.
And people wonder why we can't relate to any of these characters.

*headdesk*

[3A]

anontu
August 28 2017, 12:33:57
I remembered that when I was reading this for the first time and really liked them (but never enough to be called a fanboy) I had a mild dislike and confusion of why Roran was so good. I wasn't thinking that as farmboy he shouldn't have been able to do all this, but there was the niggle in the back of my mind that something wasn't right.

I'm no tactician either so it's quite bemusing that I learnt from a real time strategy video game series, Total War, the benefits of attacking a camp from different sides instead of all at once together and setting up in the sort of defensive position that the Empire's soldiers do. Of course studying history helps too.

[4]

Anonymous
August 28 2017, 11:31:14
Roran reminds me so much of Gaston. He is so strong you can't strangle him when he tenses his neck.

Everyone sing with me:

Gosh it disturbs me to see you, Gaston
Looking so down in the dumps
Ev'ry guy here'd love to be you, Gaston
Even when taking your lumps
There's no man in town as admired as you
You're ev'ryone's favorite guy
Ev'ryone's awed and inspired by you
And it's not very hard to see why

No one's slick as Gaston
No one's quick as Gaston
No one's neck's as incredibly thick as Gaston's
For there's no man in town half as manly
Perfect, a pure paragon!
You can ask any Tom, Dick or Stanley
And they'll tell you whose team they prefer to be on

-TTT

[4A]

theepistler
August 28 2017, 16:01:10 Edited: August 28 2017, 16:04:00
Funnily enough I actually did a re-write of that song to make it about Roran. It wasn't as funny as I expected because I barely had to change anything.

Gosh, it disturbs me to see you Roran
Looking so down in the dumps
Every guy here'd love to be you, Roran!
Even when taking your lumps
There's no Varden man as admired as you
You're everyone's favorite guy
Everyone's awed and inspired by you
And it's not very hard to see why

No one's sick as Roran
No one's a dick like Roran
No one's as incredibly thick as Roran
For there's no man in town half as douchey

[KATRINA]
Perfect, a pure Gary Stu!

[CARN/MEN]
You can ask any Thom, Horst, or G’tanly
And they'll tell you whose team they'd prefer to be on

Who kills kids like Roran?
Who breaks womens’ teeth like Roran?
Who’s much less than the sum of his parts like Roran?

[RORAN]
As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating!

[ALL]
My, what a guy, that Roran!

[RORAN]
I needed encouragement
Thank you, Carn

[CARN]
Well, there's no one as easy to bolster as you!
Too much?

[RORAN]
...Nope

[ALL]
No one fights like Roran
Douses lights like Roran

[CARN]
In a wrestling match, nobody bites like Roran

[RORAN]
When I fight, I sneak up with my quiver
And mind-enslaved mooks say a prayer
First, I carefully aim for the liver
Then I shoot from behind

[CARN]
Is that fair?

[RORAN]
I don't care

[ALL]
No one hits like Roran
Makes violent threats like Roran

[CARN]
In a spitting match, nobody spits like Gaston

[RORAN]
I'm especially good at expectorating!

[spits]

[ALL]
Ten points for Roran!

[RORAN]
When I was a lad, I ate four dozen eggs
Every morning to help me get large
And now that I'm grown, I eat five dozen eggs
So I'm roughly the size of a barge!

[RANDOM GUY}
We don’t need no stinkin’ barges!

[CARN/MEN]
Who has body hair like Roran?
Bores your to hell like Roran?

[RORAN]
Who can make up these endless refrains like Roran?
I use severed heads in all of my decorating

[ALL]
Say it again
Who's a man among men?
Who's the super success?
Don't you know? Can't you guess?
Ask his fans and his five hangers-on
There's just one guy in town
Who's got all of it down...

[RORAN]
And his name's R-O-R...A...
I believe there's another A...
It just occurred to me that I'm illiterate
And I've never actually had to spell it out loud before...

[ALL]
Roran!

[4A1]

Anonymous
August 28 2017, 16:16:33
Somebody needs to do a cover of this. We can call it the Roran theme song.

-TTT

[4A1A]

theepistler
August 28 2017, 19:47:35
I'm a pretty good singer. :p

[4A1A1]

Anonymous
August 28 2017, 20:08:19
In one of the lines, you forgot to replace Gaston with Roran. The one about spitting.

[4A1A1A]

theepistler
August 28 2017, 22:05:45
Drat! And now it's too late to edit it!

[4A1A1A1]