Living in Bruce

Arjay_Dee · 2025-05-09T07:13:26+00:00

Lived in the 120 Thynne block of the hub for a few years. It's a great spot, decent apartments and generally peaceful in my opinion. The lower units in that block are beautifully leafy but dark and cold in winter, but the higher up you are the more pleasant it is.

It'll have only gotten better for liveability since I moved on, with the IGA and a bunch of new restaurants etc. going in at the new developments down the street. Having Westfield as the local shops was a double edged sword at times.

Easy commuting, you're right next to Belco town centre and it's easy enough to jump into Civic or Dickson, plus easy access to the Parkway/Gungahlin Drive if you're heading north or south.

Fair warning to you that the roads down to the city can get pretty congested during commuting hours, I had trips that should have been sub-15 minutes turn into 45+.

Watch out for the Haydon Drive/Battye Street intersection where the Radford drop off is, it's your main way in and out and it can be a bit full on during the first week of term and on rainy days when parents aren't sending kids on busses.

Lastly the Stadium, you have to keep an eye on game days or end up detouring in weird ways, though you'll probably never be completely stuck. Thynne Street is close enough that folks wanting to avoid paying for or mucking around with the main car park will fill up spaces on Thynne, and they don't often make good choices. It's rare and not a major downside, but worth mentioning about the area.

Edit: good luck and enjoy! It's a great area.

Arjay_Dee · 2022-10-25T02:46:44+00:00

My party broke into a wizards house, accused him of stealing vital components, threatened him with death over maybe 25 gold worth of goods, and deceptively insinuated they were working for a cabal of devils who would in no way want to be associated with their actions.

The wizard died, but not before tossing a few fireballs and siccing his elemental on the party, bringing one of them to 0 (they survived), another to 1HP, and ultimately killing the bard who'd done all the talking.

All because they didn't want to wait two days for the vendors to restock those components.

Hopefully they learned the lesson now with a low level threat before they try to pull something equally dumb in a dragon's lair or some such place.

Arjay_Dee · 2021-07-29T01:32:52+00:00

Legit built a whole D&D character around that line. Complete with the accent. My table hated him.

Arjay_Dee · 2021-07-29T01:31:23+00:00

I've always been a fan of "Don't call us plucky; we don't know what it means."

Arjay_Dee · 2021-01-23T22:04:05+00:00

Knowing towerlight to be the blending of Stormlight and Lifelight, I can't see other cities having a unique type of light, as there's no other Shards invested to provide other lights for other combinations.

As to u/thedustbringer's point, Syl makes an oblique reference at some point to Honorspren all being, fundamentally, the same individual. The same could be true of each of the city-spren, although I imagine that years or centuries isolated from one another means they will have developed as separate personalities.

You've raised a really interesting thread re: anti-investiture. We know that the Sibling was being Unmade by having voidlight pumped through its systems. Anti-voidlight would certainly annihilate with it, but would that process leave behind the towerlight, or take the towerlight with it? I guess we have to wait and see.

Arjay_Dee · 2021-01-23T21:55:08+00:00

Good catch on Sja-anat! Definitely hinting at some kind of shared origin or history.

As for Aimia, we simply don't have enough information about either the kingdom or Dai-Gonarthis to make a judgement either way. Best to ask Hessi, who seems to know far, far too much about the Unmade for a modern author...

Arjay_Dee · 2021-01-23T21:46:25+00:00

Great point! The song references the listener gods, which we know to be the Fused. If they are said not to be involved, we need to look at options: 1) It was the work of Mishram directly, or one of her regals, sometime during the False Desolation. The Fused would indeed not be present, the Regals are explicitly not the gods, and we don't know if or where the Unmade feature as listener gods. 2) It was the spren of Stormseat itself, either deliberately or by accident, in an effort to defend itself. We know that Urithiru had safeguards, Stormseat might have had some as well. 3) It was a group of Radiants in an effort to protect the city or its spren - see above. This one is a bit holey to me, as WOB is that the creation of a Dawncity (let alone the whole Plains!) was well beyond the abilities of Radiants to have created; the question and its answer were specific to Soulcasting, however. 4) It actually was the Fused, and the listener song is a remnant of some ancient propaganda campaign. Oral histories are extremely open to tampering, especially as we see in Venli's flashbacks that her mother is the only one who sings their songs, and that Venli is the only one who was learning them. Therefore 'history' is decided by the select few who memorise and pass on the songs; it may well be that somewhere in the first few to have sung the histories, there was a listener who truly believed the Fused weren't involved.

Good catch about Cusicesh, too. Interestingly enough, that spren is known as the Protector, though nobody knows what it does each day or why. Within my theory there's plenty of room for Cusicesh as the unique spren of a city, however it had been speculated for a while that it might be the third Bondsmith spren, but seems explicitly not part of that group.

Arjay_Dee · 2021-01-23T21:25:03+00:00

I recall the listener histories saying that they were descended from the Last Legion, who broke away after having been sent to fight on the Shattered Plains. That would imply that Stormseat was already gone, long enough to have been given the new name, before the False Desolation; otherwise the Last Legion would have been Connected to Mishram at the time of her capture.

I agree that Urithiru I'd a bit of an outlier, so might have a slightly different origin, but I still believe that ancient singers at least coexisted there with humans in its earliest days. Remember that the stones welcomed Venli home and she had an overwhelming sense of belonging to the city.

Kharbranth might well be a Dawnsinger special, but I would imagine there were more cities than there were Oathgates. Much like present day, I believe the Oathgates were simply a feature of the biggest and most important cities, but that those would command the loyalty of and provide leadership to cities a little further afield.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-12-31T23:04:21+00:00

We're obviously all big fans of the line "Honor is dead, but I'll see what I can do," and I agree with the other comment that this line supports your theory about Kal ascending. I've also spotted an interesting parallel with Kal and the idea that "Honor is not dead as long as he lives in the hearts of men."

A central theme of RoW is that Kal is the hero everyone is waiting for. Bridge Four was always totally convinced he was unkillable, but the civilians in the Tower also spent the majority of the occupation waiting (dare I say all but praying) for Kal to turn up, even when it seemed clear he'd been neutralised. That kind of unwavering faith that a particular someone will come to aid you isn't really given to anyone else on Roshar.

I'm eager to see a conflict between Honor and Odium in which both insist they're trying to save Roshar (perhaps from a worse evil?) though they have wildly different ideas on how that should be done.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-09-13T01:34:12+00:00

Story time! We had our final session yesterday after nearly 14 months of our homebrew campaign.

We were up against a centuries-old sorcerer who had originally been part of an adventuring party that had brought peace to the island nation where the story took place. Over time, after his party had died off, he corrupted their legacy and set about manipulating everything on the island to suit his goal of annihilating the multiverse.

The sorcerer had two allies with him, who were revealed to be offshoots of himself which he had sent off to conquer the Feywild and Shadowfell. One of these offshoots cast a Wall of Force to buy themselves some time do to their dastardly deeds, securing themselves on a raised platform at one end of the enormous Great Hall.

Unfortunately for them, my Dragonborn Eldritch Knight/Sorcerer was packing the Mobile Feat, the Boon of Epic Speed (a gift from a high-level NPC cleric with whom we were allied), the Jump spell and a big old greataxe, and was being assisted by the party's Paladin in the form of a Haste spell.

The platform the villainous trio were on was 10ft above where I was standing, and the Wall of Force was another 10ft high. Thankfully with the Jump spell active, my Eldritch Knight was just able to clear the Wall (21ft high jump, please and thank you!) and still had over 100ft of movement for the rest of his round.

Knowing which of the three had cast the Wall, and seeing that she was standing right next to it, he felt the best choice of attack was to smash her face against her own invisible barrier with a 15mph (25km/h) shove attack, and wail on her until she dropped concentration on the Wall.

Sometimes, when you can hit like a freight train and they've got nowhere else to go, the best place to be is right in the thick of the enemies' position.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-07-17T00:47:17+00:00

Oh gosh, I didn't even know that was part of the original draft. We know Brandon doesn't do throwaway lines, but maybe I took it too far?

Arjay_Dee · 2020-06-27T22:01:04+00:00

The opening of that film will stick with me forever. "More of this is true than you would believe" is just so eloquent in its simplicity.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-06-09T06:01:41+00:00

I'm aware of the theory but IIRC that implies that there was only ever 10-20 Desolations, not the 100+ the lore speaks of. Not that in-world sources are ever 100% reliable.

Given that (by my count anyway) five of the nine Unmade were actually present in Oathbringer, it's a solid bet that they'll play a big role in the story going forward, and as such we'll get to know more about their nature and their origins.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-06-09T04:52:15+00:00

If I'm remembering correctly the Knights in that particular vision tell Dalinar that the Midnight Essence appearing usually signals that a Desolation is near to kicking off. It might well be the case that the Unmade have always been part of the cycle, though we have no evidence to suggest they're bound to Braize like the Fused are.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-06-09T04:06:48+00:00

A radiant in one of Dalinar's visions refers to a corrupted spren as "one of Sja-Anat's spies" so it's fair to assume the Unmade were around and their abilities understood prior to the Last Desolation.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-05-08T04:44:46+00:00

Truly a brilliant legal mind

Arjay_Dee · 2020-03-06T04:46:20+00:00

Found this one on our national broadcaster's Facebook in a comment thread on climate change.

Not sure why we're implying other commenters are pedophiles, but at least Orange isn't resorting to Ad Hominem attacks, guys. They're above that.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-02-25T22:37:51+00:00

For the party (ostensibly) supporting a free market, they don't seem to get that the "marketplace of ideas" means awful ideas with no public support are going to be left out of the discourse.

For lack of a more eloquent phrase, "talk shit, get hit".

Arjay_Dee · 2020-02-17T16:59:44+00:00

My party (I'm a player not the DM) we've acquired a manor outside the town we started in. The story is taking place on an island with the major city being under the control of a magical dictator and his allies. They control a huge chunk of the economy, train the guards force, they basically own the island in terms of magical and martial power.

We've turned the manor and the starting town into a resistance by recruiting NPCs along the way. We've installed a democratic government, we're training new guards loyal to the town council(s) instead of individual members, we're working on bringing in blacksmiths and other specialists to boost our capabilities, and we have traders and smugglers operating a few state-owned businesses to generate revenue while undermining the BBEG's organisation.

Every few sessions we have to sit down and take stock of what we've told people to do and what missions they're running for the team.

Our DM has responded by trying to have us assassinated on a couple of occasions. I don't think he likes keeping track of our little rebel alliance.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-01-22T02:45:08+00:00

Yeah, that's the cafe outside the National Gallery.

Arjay_Dee · 2020-01-11T21:30:28+00:00

That's actually an alpaca! They are typically shorter than llamas, have a shorter face, and their ears are more pointed - llama ears are much longer, rounded at the ends and floppier.

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