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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 3935235" data-attributes="member: 2525">Umm, yes they were.  They say so.  They talk about it, away from Brood's hearing, that the reason they are doing this is to try and prevent him from using the hammer which would further damage Burn.The Bridgeburnners yes (and they accomplished that goal with few losses, but then declined to pull out and blow the tunnels), but not Onearm's host.  The host itself went in for the reason they said - to stop the hammer from harming Burn.  Yeah none of that makes sense when you think about how Onearms Host went after the Bridgeburners, and didn't help anything really by going early.  They could have gone together with a better result, except for that stupid hammer excuse.  Onearms host itself did no preparing for the battle to come (Bridgeburners had already done that), they just stood in the way of the K'ell hunters and died for no particular good reason. Had they stuck to the plan, they would have known.  And the only reason they didn't stick to the plan was that "Burn will cry if hit with the hammer again" claim which turned out to be baseless.  They literally saved about 1 hour of time, at the cost of almost the entire army, to delay the hammer.I think doubting Rake makes no sense as well.  To what end?  What was the plan involving entering the city early itself...except the hammer issue?Actually, according to events in the prior book, they just sit right where their bodies become disabled.  They could be released just as easily while disabled ("dead") as when fully moving.  Nor did the Imass loss many of their numbers in the k'ell hunter battle.  They had superior numbers and fighting prowess.   Really? So Itkovian deciding to sacrifice thousands and thousands of Onearm's host, and his own former troops as well, and Gruntle's troops, all at the expense of perhaps a dozen or so Imass, was not cruel? Sorry, looks cruel to me.  He should have waited.  If he were a deity, any deity that decides to sacrifice thousands to save the pain of a dozen (a dozen who are about to die anyway, 10 minutes later), is called an Evil deity.  As a mortal, it's even worse since he has a personal relationship with those he sacrificed.I am fine with sacrifice to stop the evil empire.  But in this case, it was sacrifice for no purpose at all, and didn't even fit in with the plot.  It was a military plan with zero chance of success (aside from the hammer delay), and it made the military leaders seem like they had suddenly become incredibly stupid.Really it seemed like Erikson said to himself "I'd rather not have to write about the Bridgeburners anymore, and I'd like to reduce Onearm's host as well so I don't have to deal with it as much, so lets just kill them off here and make up some excuse about the hammer".  It was a rushed excuse, which is totally unlike all the other sacrificed Erikson makes in the other books (and even in this same book, earlier).</blockquote>

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