Good read and useful knowledge given my current interest in the evolution of warfare from "old world" (pre-WW1) to "new world". While I'm not sure any lone element can take the credit for something as complex as the rise of an international empire, certainly guns made a huge difference.

Somewhat of a deviation here but one thing I think people underestimate sometimes is how much disease did the job for colonists, particularly regarding the Americas, and in the case of the North American Natives, much of it occurred well before Europeans moved past their initial settlements. It made the difference between having hundreds of thousands of native forces compared to the rather small number of combatants the natives ever had the chance to field (in terms of a broad historical perspective).

Then again one can look at the Zulu massacres (who were an extremely competent fighting force and had perhaps greater military expertise and planning than the settlers/colonists), which were a pretty stark example of what a small group of guys with machine guns can do against a very large group of foes who lacked firearms.

Of course, firearms also found their way into the hands of the native americans quite a bit more, and so had their populations not been so devastated by disease then I think our maps would look a whole lot different.

I enjoy reading about the worldbuilding and lore on wikis but for the life of me I cannot get into this series. Started reading the first book multiple times, each time got a little further but still just ended up losing interest. I even got the damn audiobook thinking I could listen to it while driving and stuff, but I can't stand the way the narrator does female (and certain male voices) where his main method of changing his voice...involves...speaking...very...SLOW...with a STRANGE...emphasis...on...RANDOM words...

Is it worth trying to start on the second book instead or something? This is basically the only major epic fantasy series I haven't read so I feel like I need to get through it principle.   

Been listening to the shockingly good Thor: Ragnarok OST as of late.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yQRFNTr6sE&index=143&list=PLc4eSAWjWKsqMaftH_AN30dT89SYec5cb

I'm down for a cast or just to discuss any and all things TSA with those who are interested. I'm not the world's most reliable person long-term scheduling-wise, but I make up for it with being pretty flexible when it comes to actual timing and or day/night or timezone differences and so forth. I can also talk at length about damn near anything lol. Anyone who wants to shoot the shit sometime please feel free to PM me and we can swap Skype names! (I can also speak via other mediums if one so desires -- Google Hangouts, Discord, whatever works).

I definitely think there's some intentional humor -- Bakker humor, mind you -- injected into the Fanayal/Malowebi stuff. Especially towards the end when Fanayal's really losing his shit, calling in Malowebi just to rant at him, and then after the walls of Momemn fall where Fanayal's basically like "hold my beer" and ready to strike only for Kellhus to show up and clean house.

I laughed, anyway.

I did not base either one on a particular real-life human, but I used a crap load of reference images for both. Mimara actually started as a drawing of a character for my own story but as I was doing it I realized it could work for her and went from there. As for Kellhus, I just used lots of random references of photos/illustrations that looked vaguely like what I had in mind.

Kellhus took much, much longer than Mimara, in part because I really wanted to nail my internal mental image for him as I had not really seen it done before as it has with other main characters. That being said both pictures sorta played to my strengths/advantage. I.E., Mimara's face is covered with the hood, shadows, and the locks of hair, while Kellhus was just mostly beard and hair lol, so that made it a lot easier, relatively speaking (plus they're both facing the "camera" so to speak, which made it easier for me personally). Regardless I am pretty proud of both pieces since they're easily the closest I've ever come to matching my own mental vision of the characters, particularly Kellhus (though I have lots of little things I'd like to adjust at some point down the road, such as the Decapitants in general I would like to have more details such as the crown of horns, teeth, eyes, skin texture, so on and so forth, additionally the also the overrall layout and symmetry of the figures relative to each other and their respective mountain range backdrops).

I completely missed that part about the shroud forming a Halo aroung Moënghus' head. I've re-read certain chapters many times but I still need to re-read the book as a whole.

I believe it occurs during the Cnaiur/Proyas/Moe confrontation, but I'm not 100%.

And yeah, there's still so much stuff I'm finding with TUC, even in conjunction with the earlier books. For example I somehow had no idea that the bit with Cnaiur dreaming of the pool and the worm was not a brand new sequence, but goes all the way back to the first damn book. Crazy stuff lol.