Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

About skill comparisons between main character swordsmen:

"Read the book." About the forms used: I was curious, so I asked if he had studied the sword fighting arts or just researched. It's research, and the forms come from Japanese sword fighting and some European fencing, before the advent of well-designed and well-made guns made swords obsolete. He mentioned one book in particular, but I can't remember the title... :(

Lan and Rand's swords are loosely based on the katana, and another style of sword I had never heard of before (sooba? something like that anyway. SilverWarder might know) and that others were based on medieval European styles. He said that blademasters don't follow one particular historical style of fighting, but that different blademasters have different styles depending on their culture of origin.

At this point he went off on a little tangent about Miyamoto Musashi, a reknowned Japanese swordsman that developed a two-sword style of fighting that was revolutionary at the time. He related that Musashi developed his fighting style after fighting in the Philippines against fighters (Dutch? Portuguese? I didn't write their nationality down, but somebody here might know) that were using swords and dirks in a two-handed fighting style. In any case, I think his point was to demonstrate how fighting styles, like other knowledge, disseminates from culture to culture, but is changed and adapted into something unique in each locale.

I blogged briefly yesterday about the Suvudu cage matches. I thought I'd dig into it a little further today, as I consider Monday updates (normally) to be more "Here's what's going on" updates. I prefer to move more in-depth posts to other days.

So, the Suvudu cage match. First off, I'd like to say that I'm impressed by the improvements made to the format this year. For one thing, the editors made a conscious effort to even out the power level of the combatants. That goes a long way toward making the matchups more interesting, I think—no longer do we have to suspend disbelief to epic proportions in order to pretend that Jaime Lannister would somehow ever NEED to fight Cthulhu, and somehow find a way to win.

There are still some things to gripe about here, as there is still great power-level variety in the matchups. All things considered, this is a good group to battle it out, but do Gollum and Tasslehoff REALLY belong in this? I don't think they match the others. And what about Pug, Allanon, and Zedd? Three full-blown, deeply trained wizards amid a bunch of melee fighters? Fantasy novels aren't D&D. (Well, hopefully most of them aren't.) There's no reason to force power balance between the arcane and the non-arcane. But anyway, at least there aren't any Elder Gods running around.

So, what are my thoughts? Basically, thinking of it rationally, Pug and company should end up dominating. Maybe Beowulf too. I mean, really. Beowulf is the proto-hero that almost all of the rest are (tangentially) based upon; the guy was practically indestructible. The others are arguably demi-dieties, and would be better off playing hardball with people like Rand and Gandalf than ending up fighting people like Tally or Druss. (Who, don't get me wrong, are both totally awesome—but they're going to have trouble with people who can teleport, call down the powers of the elements, and all-around warp the fabric of reality.)

Questions like these make it a little hard for me to figure out just what's going on here. Is it just supposed to be a popularity contest? If so, Jacob Black wins and we can all go home. (Sorry, but it's true.) If it's not supposed to be a popularity contest, and we're supposed to consider each pairing realistically, why don't we have more information on the matches? How far apart do the combatants start? It's a "cage match" by Suvudu's title, but are they really fighting in a standard-issue wrestling cage? I mean, come ON, guys. We're nerds here. We can't make subjective judgments about fictional characters completely outside of canon if you don't at LEAST tell us how the fights are set up.

Do people with followers get to bring some along? What about Perrin—one of his basic powers is calling on wolves for help. So can we assume he's got a pack of them with him? Do the sf characters have guns? Can Vin assume everyone she'll fight will have metal on them, or can we assume they will each know the person they're fighting and be able to prepare?

Okay, yes, I'm overthinking this. But don't tell me you weren't too. Anyway, here's my input on the two matches I've got some responsibility for:

Perrin against Tasslehoff. Really. We're doing this? Okay, well, here's what we've got. Perrin is an extremely skilled fighter whose very nature (being ta'veren) causes probability to warp around him and bring to him the things and people he needs at the moments he needs them. He has a power-forged hammer, the allegiance of tens of thousands of trained soldiers, and the ability to call upon hundreds of wolves if he really needed to. He is a berserker on the battlefield, and has the power to move in the World of Dreams, where he has near-absolute control of his surroundings. He is guarded by Aiel warriors and two powerful Asha'man who can wield the One Power that made Rand such a force in the previous tournament.

Tasslehoff has a stick that throws rocks.

Okay, I'm underplaying it. Tas is a clever, brave little guy. (Actually, I think he may be immune to fear or something.) He's prone to have a few tricks up his sleeves, magic items stolen here or there. But he's also got a childlike view of the world, and has nowhere near the ruthlessness that Perrin has been forced by fate to learn. Tas can't win this fight. I declare that this battle plays out like so: Tas defaults on his match by not showing up. He's off picking Jon Snow's pockets. Perrin wins. (And Wheel of Time fans, don't prove me wrong. We'll never live it down if Perrin loses to Tasslehoff.)

As for Vin and Logen Ninefingers, this is a far more even battle. To put the duel on better footing, I'm going to say that this is Vin before certain events toward the end of Mistborn 3 that would make the fight wildly unfair. Also, I'm going to remove atium (which would let her see the future and win any battle she wants) from her repertoire for now. (If she has to fight Zedd, all bets are off.)

So, she's a very, very talented Mistborn, capable of greatly increased strength, greatly increased speed, near-infinite endurance, supernatural sensory abilities, the capacity to change a person's emotions at will, virtual immunity to metal weapons, the power to kill at range with coins shot at high speeds with expert precision, the ability to ignore many wounds and heal at an accelerated rate, and telekinetic powers that allow her to vault long distances and remain in the air when needed.

Okay, so maybe it's not much of a fair fight. (This is what I was talking about.) Logen is a toughened warrior, very careful, but also capable of turning into a crazed berserker who doesn't feel pain. But that's not enough to face Vin. She's out of his league. This fight goes on for a while, but he can't get to Vin, who hovers outside of his range and flings back any weapons or arrows he uses against her. She pelts him with coins, then takes his head off with a six-foot-long koloss sword.

He worries about repeating himself in writing and tries to vary his writing.

As research for his writing he has variously: bungee jumped to feel what like to fall off a building; gone to self-defense class; watched sword-fighting at Cons and of course read broadly.

The 4th Age podcast is brought to you by Dragonmount.com. To contact us, visit our website: bit.ly/4thAge.

AND NOW, FOR YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN...

Want me to tell you about my dreams? I keep dreaming it's the Last Battle, and it's not just, you know, in the book; I'm at the Last Battle, and this is a recurring dream kind of thing, and like, one night was the Last Battle, and Napoleon showed up with his dirigibles to fight the side of the line (?), and we were trying to find out if they were hydrogen or helium, because it, you know, made a big difference.

VIRGINIA

Makes a difference, yeah.

JENNIFER LIANG

(?) talking to you…

MARIA SIMONS

Another night, Darth Vader—the original one, not Whiny Boy [laughter]—showed up to fight for the Dark One…you know, it just keeps going on and on, and it's fun. Sort of. Sometimes it's scary. There was one where we were fighting the Last Battle in a gated community, and Tam al'Thor showed up, and then we realized it wasn't really Tam al'Thor; it was the Dark One, and so we had to escape. And so we did, and then after that, here comes Wilson Grooms! And, you know, I love Wilson! Wilson is one of my favorite people on earth! And then we realized it wasn't really Wilson, and we had to fight him! And I had a sword, and I had to hit Wilson with—what looked like Wilson—with a sword, and it was just really scary! And unpleasant. And I was glad to wake up for that one...but usually they're fun. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

You must be a Dreamer!

MARIA SIMONS

Uhh…yeah, yeah; I dream. I had a dream once that...

MARK

I want whatever you're on. [laughter]

VIRGINIA

Yeah, I was just thinking that. Send it here immediately!

SPENCER POWELL

I think it's called Wheel of Time.

MARIA SIMONS

Yeah.

VIRGINIA

Yeah.

JENNIFER LIANG

Yeah.

Hi Brandon, so a friend and I who share a passion for sword fighting have been trying to find the real world correlates for the stances that Shardbearers use. So far we've made connections between Windstance and Haidong Gumdo, and Smokestance and the late Medieval/early Renaissance fencing. I was wondering if you could give us more information or at least hints on the other real world correlates?

I developed these with Ben McSweeny's help, and we plan to include representations of all the stances eventually. However, a few are NOT based on real-world equivalents, because of the size of Shardblades. Look at how various very-large weapons like zweihanders or Zanbatōs were used.