Did anyone speak from the top of the Tower of Revelstone?

[CovenantJr]

Actually, I'm not even sure it's possible to build a hollow 1,000-foot tower out of stone. Masonry is quite frail, as building materials go, and tall stone structures require an enormous thickness of wall.

Ah, but Revelstone was hewn from a promontory by Giants, whose knowledge of stone far surpasses ours And you may or may not have noticed that the Land doesn't have quite the same laws of physics we do

[Variol Farseer]

Ah, but Revelstone was hewn from a promontory by Giants, whose knowledge of stone far surpasses ours And you may or may not have noticed that the Land doesn't have quite the same laws of physics we do

Yes, but the rule in writing fantasy is that you use our laws of physics by default, and make specific exceptions to them, which are known to the reader (or guessable from points described by the author). To do otherwise is cheating, or at least careless writing.

In the same chapter where he mentions the dimensions of the cliff and the tower, SRD says that the Keep is made of granite. Granite doesn't have the structural properties he ascribes to it — can't have, in a world ruled by Law. If he had wanted to make the Keep out of unobtainium or handwavestone or kryptonite, fine; but any substance with the properties he ascribed to the gutrock of Lord's Keep cannot fairly be described as granite.

A clever copyeditor would have caught this problem and made him scale back those measurements by half. Then even the nitpickers would be silent. Mind you, it's a nit I would never have picked if this thread had not called my attention to it. But once I examined the data, it became clear that the only reasonable answer is, 'SRD goofed.'

Even Homer nods.

[I'm Murrin]

He did the same type of thing with the height of Kevin's Watch - he doesn't seem to have been trying for physical accuracy, just trying to give a sense of scale, and it just happened that these sizes he gave are larger than they sound (2000 feet sounds high, but it doesn't sound as high as it is in reality). Thinking about it too literally brings up problems like these.

[CovenantJr]

Yeah, I think the feel is more important than the actual dimensions.

[Lord Callindrill]

I don't think there's a lot of mystery here. In TIW when Elena and Covenant were preparing to depart from Revelwood, SRD specifically says that Elena was able to project her voice upward so that all in the tree could hear her. Since several Lords did the same over the course of the series, it's probably a garden-variety use of Earthpower.

[duchess of malfi]

Exactly.

And perhaps the Giants used Earthpower when they carved out Revelstone.

And as far as that goes, things that are a bit "out there" don't bother me when it comes to fantasy novels. The fact that humans probably couldn't live on a world with seasons as far out of whack as they are in Westeros doesn't matter a bit to me when George R. R. Martin can create such wonderful characters as the ones who live there.

If I particularly cared about the specifics of the use of granite in weight bearing walls, I would be reading an engineering or architecture textbook, rather than a fantasy novel. What matters about Revelstone is the people who made it, and the people who live in it, not the fact that it couldn't exist here.

[dlbpharmd]

Well said, Duchess.

[Variol Farseer]

Exactly.

And perhaps the Giants used Earthpower when they carved out Revelstone.

And as far as that goes, things that are a bit "out there" don't bother me when it comes to fantasy novels. The fact that humans probably couldn't live on a world with seasons as far out of whack as they are in Westeros doesn't matter a bit to me when George R. R. Martin can create such wonderful characters as the ones who live there.

If I particularly cared about the specifics of the use of granite in weight bearing walls, I would be reading an engineering or architecture textbook, rather than a fantasy novel. What matters about Revelstone is the people who made it, and the people who live in it, not the fact that it couldn't exist here.

That's quite true. But when people start picking nits about these details, as they do in this thread, someone has to step in and say: Look, SRD is not a structural engineer. He has said that he doesn't think in spatial terms when writing stories. There is no rationale for you to find. You're analysing something that isn't even there. Revelstone, as a physical entity, is principally a backdrop for the action, and as any stage manager knows, backdrops aren't architecture.

People have got into the bad habit of niggling over background minutiae, I think, chiefly because Tolkien set the bar so high in the Appendices to LOTR. But by the time those books were published, he had spent 40 years working on Middle-earth in obsessive detail. It was an intellectual game that he loved to play. Thus, for the most part, the details were there, and he had done his best to consider every aspect of his invented world. Most fantasy writers just don't. SRD doesn't; he doesn't consider it important. For him, the focus is always on the characters and their actions. Vivid though the Land appears to the mind's eye, it really is just like a stage set made of lath and plaster and papier-mâché.

[The Dreaming]

I think this easily falls within my personal suspension of disbelief. An old saying goes "If you are going to swallow the whole pile of S**t, don't let the flies bother you".

That being said, they are the Lords of Revelstone, the keepers of Kevin's lore and servants of Earthpower. I think they can project.

[matrixman]

BUMP!

[wayfriend]

Some other things to throw into the debate.

- The urvile's catapult was able to fling vitrim - a liquid - to within feet of the top of the tower.

- There is frequent mention of climbing the stairs to the top. There is no mention of this taking hours, or of being exhausted.

- the tower was regained with several Eoman. Less then one hundred men. You could not scour the enemy out of something so big with so few men.

On the other hand

- the plateau is 2000 feet in general. Revelstone is on a wedge-shaped promontory extending from the plateau. No measurements for this were given, and the towers height, where ever mentioned, is only as "half" of this height. (On the other hand, the base is clearly indicated to be several hundred feet.)

- - - - - -

My conclusion is that Donaldson simply has very little understanding of what a 1000 foot tall tower means. In my mind, I imagine the tower to be maybe six or seven stories, maybe 100 feet tall.

[matrixman]

Some other things to throw into the debate.

- The urvile's catapult was able to fling vitrim - a liquid - to within feet of the top of the tower.

- There is frequent mention of climbing the stairs to the top. There is no mention of this taking hours, or of being exhausted.

- the tower was regained with several Eoman. Less then one hundred men. You could not scour the enemy out of something so big with so few men.

Excellent points, Wayfriend. Yes, that must've been one heckuva catapult to fling stuff that high. The Romans would be very impressed!

[Warmark]

- the tower was regained with several Eoman. Less then one hundred men. You could not scour the enemy out of something so big with so few men.

I'm not sure about this one : anyone remember if there was more than one staircase? If there was only one it would not have taken many men to find and trap the invaders at the top of the tower. ( Its been a while since i read LMV so im a little skectchy on the deatails atm. ) So i might be wrong.

[tonyz]

The tower doesn't <i>feel</i> as tall as the Empire State Building when one is reading it.

One might suggest that the mountain end of the plateau is two thousand feet high, and the surface drops toward the plains from there, so the final peak of the promontry is maybe 300-500 feet high, and the tower about 200 feet, give or take.

It still makes sense that the Lords would use some form of Earthpower to be heard from the top of it when yelling to people on the ground... but trained orators, in the days before PA systems, could project their voice amazingly well (it's largely a lost art these days).

[wayfriend]

One might suggest that the mountain end of the plateau is two thousand feet high, and the surface drops toward the plains from there, so the final peak of the promontry is maybe 300-500 feet high, and the tower about 200 feet, give or take.

That's my position, too. There's nothing I can find in the text which contradicts this.

[Waynhim Wedge]

Hawksbill Mountain in Virginia (Skyline Drive) is 4000 feet elevation. Not only that but it has a low stone wall (circular in shape) that rests at the end of the path leading from the main tourist area. There is no massive mountain directly behind it, but it is a strange coincidence if SRD didn't use this locale (or at least was inspired by it). And thankfully there is no 500-ft stair...

[The Somberlain]

One might suggest that the mountain end of the plateau is two thousand feet high, and the surface drops toward the plains from there, so the final peak of the promontry is maybe 300-500 feet high, and the tower about 200 feet, give or take.

That's my position, too. There's nothing I can find in the text which contradicts this.

With Mhoram behind him, he stepped out into the open air. At once, perspectives opened, and a spasm of vertigo clutched at him. The balcony hung halfway up the southern face of Revelstone - more than a thousand feet straight above the foothills which rested against the base of the mountain.

He stopped in the entryway, braced himself against the stone. Beyond the railing of the balcony was a fall of three or four hundred feet to the foothills (....) The balcony was in the eastern face of the tower.

So either Revelstone is... HUGE... or Donaldson doesn't quite grasp the concept of scale. But the descriptions of the book are definitely gigantic.

[Usivius]

... it's fantasy!
And if a strange race of highly magical creatures want to build a catapult sufficient to throw acid at its heights... so be it.

I never had a problm with it, although in my mind's eye I would confess to having a mental picture of something half the scale mentioned in the books.

<shrug>.. go big or go home...

[wayfriend]

Thanks, Somberlain. Now I am left to simply believe that Donaldson doesn't grasp dimensions well. (Perhaps that's the price of visualizing in words. You'd think after describing Troy's blind acuity ("I was determined not to let go because I had a very clear idea of how far above the ground nine floors is.") he might have double-checked some things.) Although it remains possible that he intended Revelstone's tower to be that huge.

[The Somberlain]

Being the European I am, I can't really think in feet anyway... so I just imagine something huge. Perhaps it's not quite the scale that's described, which could be why I don't have much of a problem with it.