I know, what a catchy title, took me a while to come up with it. Anyway, recipes, you have them, I want them. And anyone with recipes involving white chocolate will have amnesty from the Cocoacloaks that throng around these parts. All chocolate is worthy of devouring, we will not have discrimination here. As I am sure everyone is aware of, chocolate originated in South America. The cocoa tree was first domesticated 5,300 years ago in present-day Ecuador. The seeds of the fruit of the cocoa tree are very bitter and need to be fermented before being processed. The fruits of the three types of cocoa tree are shown above. After fermentation, the seeds are roasted and the husks of the seeds are harvested as cocoa nibs. The nibs can be ground into cocoa mass, and then liquefied by heat into chocolate liquor. The liquor can then be cooled and processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter. The solids are then often further treated with an alkalizing agent such as potassium or sodium carbonate to remove the acidity of the solids, which gives it a much less bitter taste. This is often called Dutch cocoa, after the pioneering chocolate maker Coenraad Johannes van Houten, who developed the technique. You can see the relative degree of Dutching by the colour of the solids. The darker powder on the left are Dutched solids, on the right, natural cocoa solids. Dutching also has an effect on the level of caffeine (reducing it to a third) and the anti-oxidants (reducing them by 60%) in the cocoa solids. It is interesting to note that cocoa is so high in anti-oxidants that even Dutch cocoa is considered a high anti-oxidant food. Dutch cocoa forms the basis for most modern chocolate applications. I was not going to include how chocolate is made as I thought everyone would already know, but actually after reading briefly up on it I realised that there a lot of detail there that I was completely ignorant about, so I have included the basics anyway. Everyone loves chocolate, but of course, people being people, there has to be a dark side to it as well. While the plant was first domesticated in South America, currently most chocolate is grown in West Africa. It is estimated that more than two million children are involved in the farming of cocoa in Africa, with two major concerns being human trafficking and slavery. In a Dutch program about slavery involved in chocolate a spokesperson for Nestle appeared to downplay the importance of slavery as your normal chocolate farmer was so poor, it really did not make a lot difference. Here in the Netherlands, a reporter called Teun van de Keuken, made headlines when he reported himself to the police for being an accomplice to slavery. His argument was that he knew that chocolate was produced using slavery yet still financially contributed to the process by buying chocolate. Legal experts advised that there was definitely a case to be answered under Dutch law, and Teun collected tens of thousands of signatures urging for him to be jailed. In the end, the court decided the motion was inadmissible and without denying the horrors involved in cocoa production, prosecuting Teun and the more than two thousand other chocolate consumers that came forward, was not the correct way to deal with the issue. The publicity, and a cynic might point to research that people would pay many times more for chocolate that was guaranteed to be slave free, lead to Teun's own brand of chocolate - "Tony's Chocolonely", a name thought up for a new Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream that Teun tried to pitch to that company as part of his awareness raising about the issue - has become the market leader in the Netherlands, and costs at least three times as much as Verkade, the previous market leader. So that is a bit depressing. Even outside of the exploitation of the farmers, as part of Teun's programming, he traveled to Africa where the chocolate was farmed with a suitcase full of chocolate. In a village, with the Headman's permission, he distributed the various chocolate bars and sweeties out (after the Headsman had had first pick) to the villagers, none of whom had never tasted chocolate before in their lives, despite spending their entire lives farming the cocoa plant. Truly upsetting and humbling as an indication of the privilege that we have in the First World. Anyway on that point, I'll open the floor to anyone else that would like to discuss anything about chocolate or share a recipe, and go look up some good recipes to share. Where is Maw Broon's cookbook now?

We Shadowspawn do not need to bluster to pretend to be fearsome. We are terrifying. *turns eyeless gaze on Moridin* Accede to my request or not, but you only let your fear show with these games.

Could I respectfully ask for an N?

Could ask for the highly unlikely E. It being the most common letter in the English language and a near certainty with TH up in a three-letter word, I thought I would take one for the team and guess it.

Yes, they were going to leave before Tar'mon Gaidon, but Loial's eloquence before the Great Stump won the day for staying and fighting and dying so Rand could live and have a harem. Though the Seanchan Ogier appear to be not part of that, though that is all a bit confused in the lore due to lack of information. *has fingers crossed he has not made this bit up*

The answer obviously would take far too long to really go into. A short answer would not do the subject justice. I'll put the full detailed answer in spoilers to save people scrolling. This is a thread that I have been meaning to contribute to but did not manage so far due to acute laziness. However anyone tries to argue the point, knowledge and interpretation are inseparable. Facts alone are meaningless. Intellectual systems without factual basis are also meaningless. Or maths, so pretty much the same. For example, what does archaeology tell us without interpretation? If pottery shards are found at a certain depth at a certain location, is that fact interesting or illuminating? A theory of what those shards mean has to concocted. Or another example is New Coke. Despite worldwide domination (what would alien archaeologists make of the spread of Coca Cola merchandise in a few hundred years?), those at Coca Cola felt that their product always coming the bottom of blind taste testing was something they needed to fix. Because that was a fact. And facts are important, m'kay? So the multi-billion dollar (I may be exaggerating) disaster that was New Coke happened. But if it was fact based how could this be? As the taste tests were sip tests. Which were not accurate to how most people drink soft drinks. Interpretation is important. Intellect on its own though leads to the horrors that can be seen in the discussion of the Raven paradox. But I am not allowed to talk about that. *pouts* Oh, I haven't pouted in months! Everyone is being far too well behaved. *pouts again* I know, you are thinking what about Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exactly. No, come with me on this one. We can read hieroglyphs, even though they baffled everyone for quite literally thousands of years. Until they were deciphered it was the prevalent theory that they pictorial, which seems so dumb, as if they were, why could everyone not understand them? But anyway. Some English guy whose name escapes me and if you are too lazy to look it up then I don't see why I should, noticed that the Egyptians circled the names of their pharaohs (lit. big house, only used very late in Egyptian history) to protect them from evil magic. The circle is called a cartouche, from the French for cartridge as it was French soldiers who first remarked upon them in Napoleon's jaunt into Egypt. So this meant said English guy could work out what the names of the pharaohs were in hieroglyphs. This led to him painstakingly making a phonetic alphabet of hieroglyphs. Though of course, that does not help you understand what it actually means. Queue some French bloke, ah ha!, Jean Pollion, bet you didn't expect that, I can remember about one name in a thousand. So there. Anyway, where was I? Ah, queue Jean, who was a precocious little trolloc, whose father was a librarian. So little Jean grew up amongst books, and by the time he was a teenager could speak (well, read at least) something like 23 languages. And when he was looking at the latest research on hieroglyphs, he realised he could understand it. One of the languages that he spoke was Coptic, the language of the orthodox church in Egypt - that to this day still holds mass in the Egyptian language of priests, ancient Egyptian. And so now we can understand the very words of a civilisation thousands of years old. Thanks to amazing reasoning, and superlative knowledge. The two cannot be un-intertwined. I was going to go on about Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, but I'll leave that for another day. Disclaimer: I haven't looked any of this up, so the actual details may not be entirely consist with the external world outwith my brain, but that does not affect the argument contained within.

Don't start with New Spring. It is chronologically the first but will disrupt the story telling in the first three books in particular. It was written after Path of Daggers (I think?) so around then would probably be best, though definitely not before the first tbree.

I always thought it would be interesting to see Morgase (or maybe Elayne, but her mother would have been better, imho) coming to the Two Rivers. Not sure when in the story would have been best, and the whole Lord of the Two Rivers would have confused things. But it would have been fun I think to see the village council and the women's circle offer hospitality to the Queen while explaining actually they were not part of her Kingdom.

Let the good times roll.

Pigs use potties? Did nearly buy a pig once but reading up on it despite what breeders claim, the size of the pig will always vary and will nearly always be bigger than promised and no matter how small they really need a good amount of space outdoors to keep healthy. But a mini-house-pig would have sent my daughter to seventh heaven.

What a cute little piggy! *cuddles and snuggles piggy*

Thank you guys, it really is appreciated. *loves you all*

It is true what, er, someone famous said (was it Mark Twain? Cannot remember), it is the things we did not do that we regret, not the things that we did. I suppose it is important to remember that in relationships, even when you might think it is referring to something else.

Oh thank the Light, lol. Though my suggestion remains stupid as it was not a political counterweight to Andor, so being a natural traditional/new divide completely makes no sense.

Yeah, sorry. I'm a bit freaked out by this. I kind of remember everything, sort of. And I have no idea where the info I posted above came from. I was convinced that Saldaea, the Two Rivers and Ghealdan united in an Alliance through Perrin's connections and it was called the Griffin League. I can only hope there is some mention of something like this in an alternate future or portal stone or something, but there is no mention of it on the wiki. I'm kinda young for dementia, but that is kind of my best guess at this point. So yeah sorry, I imagine my suggestion did not make a lot sense. I can only say it did in my head, if that is any consolation. This is really quite scary, but well, not much I can do about it. I mean was it a dream? Can I trust myself to discuss the books any more if I am making up large chunks of story in my head? Will I be able to follow the plot of an RP or will I add stuff in all the time that hasn't happened?

One thing could be that the Griffon League could be a focal point for non-conformist channelers. It would be the natural place for wolfkin to congregate, and with Greater Andor being in the tradtional Aes Sedai fold with the Kin, channelers with new ideas could well gravitate away from a traditionalist centre as that. Griffon dreamwalkers (wolfkin or otherwise) could also counter-balance the Aiel. And the Black Tower - I could see them going either out on their own, or also gravitating to the Griffon League. I don't see Wavefinders as a power as they will be on their ships and dispersed. So perhaps for simplicity, you could have the Griffon channelers, the remains of the White Tower and Kin, and the Aiel as the three powers for channelers (and of course the Seanchan, but I kind of see them as more foreigners at this point, in relation to Merrilor). With perhaps an off-shoot of ultra-traditionalists, such as Arie's idea for the Red Ajah. It's an idea anyway.

Welcome to Dragonmount 🙂 I look forward to seeing you about the place especially in the role playing forums. Hope you enjoy your time here 🙂

Some Nijmegen humour, this wall painting has been round the corner from my house (just opposite the chicken coop I mentioned a while back) as long as I have lived here at least - updated in corona times with the face mask.

Correct, Moridin is cute! 🙂

Interesting. I like the way you think, Arie 🙂 I have a few points. Steam power cannot be easily miniturized. The concept of stram-powered gadgets is complete fantasy in steampunk clothing How would electrical gadgets and ter'angreal be different? This seems like reinventing the wheel, but in a hugely more complex and fraught with difficulties manner Much of the "magical" vibe that the AI is giving out does not seem consistent with the One Power. It would not be draining the elemental energy of the land. It would not be acting like simply some sort of energy supply, but would have to conform to existing channeling Generating electricity generally means through a dinamo which is indistinguishable from an electric motor. This seems like to big a step to me Where would the infrastructure for coal supply come from? Of course an interesting alternative would be to have One Power-powered (through a manufacturable ter'angreal?) steam engine (i.e.,to boil the water) which could localise the technology and mean that we don't have to role play the effect of the industrial revolution instead of our characters. The lack of infrastructure in terms of transport, logistics etc., would be an important limiting factor in the spread of the technology and its usefulness. New aspects inspired by the books are great, but I definitely think we do not want to stray too far. Arie's idea of it being a struggling budding technology with limited application I think is good. None of the factors which precipitated the Industrial Revolution are present in the Westlands, so I don't think we want to try and write a new timeline for a revolution on a completely different basis.

Welcome to Dragonmount 🙂 The books are definitely deep, with a lot of influences and parallels. I wish you well on your Journey through the Third Age, look forward to seeing about on the forums. May you always find shade and water 🙂

M O R I D I _ / IS / CUTE There is a D 🙂 Guessed A C D E I L M O P R S T U Y 4 notches Cairos on the gallows. Arie is stretched painfully on to her tiptoes.

It's just that electricity means no flint and tinder (not the app), no channeling lanterns alight, no flickering torches, surely a huge amount of industrialisation, the end of horses... It seems too big a technological advance. Especially when we should already be taking into account Jordan's steam engines and gunpowder weapons that were just dropped in with zero development or context. A building with a standing weave, tied off flows maintaining lighting, a stasis box full of glolamps/glosticks (is that the right term?) or the rediscovery of how to make them or other ter'angreal all see a better and more consistent in-world solution for non-lamp lighting.

That is a shame to hear. I can understand when there is such a gulf between your expectations and reality that it can be disorientating.