Dragaera

Reliability and POV

Kenneth Gorelick pulmon at comcast.net
Mon Feb 16 05:54:25 PST 2004

On Feb 16, 2004, at 8:01 AM, Bryan Newell wrote:

>> Does the fact that Castle Black is a floating castle cause any 
>> concern?
>> Floating things
>> aren't always (perhaps aren't normally) stationary things. And even if
>> magically
>> stationary (as magically floating) what is the assurance that it has
>> been station-keeping
>> in the same place throughout the several eras of the tales?
>
> Yes, that is a big concern... I'm not ready to give text examples yet, 
> but
> the distance from Dzur Mountain to Castle Black was "40 or 45 miles" 
> per
> Paarfi at the end of the Interregnum, and "some 50 miles" per Vlad 240 
> years
> later, so it _appears_ that, if it moves, it tends to return to the 
> same
> spot.
>
> Furthermore, a conversation towards the end of "Lord of Castle Black"
> (again, no text yet, this is from memory) about moving the (newly) 
> floating
> Castle Black to Dzur Mountain, and how long it would take (100s if not 
> 1000s
> of years) to move those 40 or 45 miles makes me think it doesn't move 
> much,
> if at all.
>
> I think the Floating Castles are more Levitating Castles than Flying
> Castles.
>
> On a mostly-unrelated tangent, where are the flying ships?  Think 
> about it:
> Flying Ship vs Floating Castle, that's gotta have a high CQ (Cool
> Quotient)...
>
> Bryan

You might think that, but I think that the responsible parties, to wit, 
the Orca, would see it more like a fish out of water...