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humite — The White Tower

Published: 2012-12-22 02:32:09 +0000 UTC; Views: 2133; Favourites: 25; Downloads: 22
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Description This is part of my own interpretation of the White Tower in the 4th age. I've set it aloft on its own floating island as the 4th age climbes to AOL heights once again. It's still mostly in a draft stage and there are no people yet, but I thought I's share and see if anyone liked this approach. It's far from canon but I figured, if the building survives the last battle, there's gonna be some renovations needed - so there's room for interpretation.
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Comments: 13

JaimieK [2012-12-23 19:42:54 +0000 UTC]

I'm with Altaeyyr - the book description of the straight shaft plus wings, courtyards, etc. made it hard to picture. Even though this is indeed not your canonical tower, it's nice to have a visual of what such a glorious structure might look like. I like the fact that you took an architectural approach to realizing the WoT world.

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rmboye [2012-12-22 16:45:24 +0000 UTC]

This is intense. I love how you take the idea that the building is more than just the one tower and set it amid smaller towers and domes and other halls and make it all match. I have long been disappointed with a lot of the 'official' versions of the White Tower because they all seem to miss the original description from way, way back in tEotW.

This is simply amazing.

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humite In reply to rmboye [2012-12-22 20:18:46 +0000 UTC]

Thank you very much!
I seriously didn't expect showing these to anyone would have created the amount of positive feedback I've gotten! But so far you guys are extremely kind!

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HarmonicSonic [2012-12-22 14:05:50 +0000 UTC]

Now there just needs to be some jo-cars and sho-wings running around to give it a busy, well-visited look.

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humite In reply to HarmonicSonic [2012-12-22 20:12:24 +0000 UTC]

You're absolutely right! I still need to create the foliage for the Tower grounds and populate it with people - problem is I'm more of an architectural modeler and have no experience or talent for modeling people. especially people as richly textured as those in the WOT universe!

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Elandria [2012-12-22 12:00:32 +0000 UTC]

I really really like your vision of the tower, actually I think its one of the few that actually looks like it would work logically Would love to see some more renders from different angles!!

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humite In reply to Elandria [2012-12-22 20:10:23 +0000 UTC]

I just loaded a couple more. Thank you very much for the feedback!

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Elandria In reply to humite [2012-12-22 21:56:15 +0000 UTC]

Cool I shall pootle over and have a look Thanks for letting me know!

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Altaeyyr [2012-12-22 03:49:14 +0000 UTC]

This is an interesting approach. I assume the smaller sections of building at the base are part of the Tower too, rather than part of Tar Valon, which makes more sense anyway. It always kind of baffled me how it was described as being a single straight shaft when it also has wings and courtyards, etc. It makes more sense to me for it to have those little offshoots at the bottom.

Maybe that's where the novices are housed...

This is excellent, love the detail. May I ask what program you used?

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humite In reply to Altaeyyr [2012-12-22 05:42:49 +0000 UTC]

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. I built this with 3DS Max and Mental Ray.
My interpretation of the Tower has it starting with 4 wings aligned to cardinal compass points
- the south wing is public and guest quarters,
- the north wing is service - the kitchens, dining, laundry, carpenters, storerooms, etc.
- The west wing is the tower library and
- the east wing is the school.
I envisioned the 4th age evolving the Aes Sedai to 8 Ajahs and 3 types of student - Initiate, Novice and Accepted.

As you guessed, the smaller towers located where each pair of wings intersect are for housing the initiates, novices, accepted and tower servants, respectively.
Then the central tower starts above that moving from public, government (in the domes), eyes and ears, Ajah work areas and Ajah quarters.

I know..that's a lot of useless detail for a grown man to picture in his head just to come up with a practical architectural layout for a mythological building. What can I say, my career is in finance so I need a lot of mental escapes to keep my mind from turning to sludge.

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Altaeyyr In reply to humite [2012-12-22 13:32:21 +0000 UTC]

Haha!~ No don't worry about it, it makes perfect sense. I've always wanted to try 3DS Max, I've got Maya though and Mental Ray is what we work with in games design. Needless to say, this is fantastic. Having used similar programs I can only imagine how much effort went into this.

I can definitely see the logic in that layout and I'll be honest, this is kind of what I pictured in my mind when the Tower was brought up, regardless of what descriptions went with it.

What would the 8th Ajah be and what's it's function? I know technically there's 8 already (counting Black) but unless you're counting the Kin as an Ajah all their own? Or maybe going with my theory about having an Ajah dedicated entirely to raising women/men (4th Age involves men too?) to be Sitters/Keepers/Amyrlin in which case they won't have any previous affiliation and therefore won't show favouritism to any particular Ajah. That's always what I assumed their problem was, too much inter-Ajah politics.

Aaanyway... so what would the difference be between the Initiates and the Novices? Accepted staying pretty much as is.

See, not weird, this is me doing the same thing you're saying is strange for a fellow. He did a good job with his world and the lore that goes with it. Nothing wrong with expanding a little in down time.

I just wrote an essay...

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humite In reply to Altaeyyr [2012-12-22 19:53:11 +0000 UTC]

The initiates are the shortest training period - you'd be an initiate until you learned to safely channel the OP and passed the danger point of dying in the effort, becoming a dreaded wilder with a block or killing those around you. You'd get as far as being compenant channeling and have enough experience that you could see your flows but not yet taught to actually do anything with the power. This way you've got a safe outlet for those like Morgase who don't have enough ability to complete novice training but still enough to die learning the hard way. (I also had this vision of there being a specific way of learning to channel where if you were taught to channel in that specific manner while wearing an A'Dam the whole time, by the time you could channel on your own, you'd have built an imunity to the A'Dam - removing that threat for good).
Novices pick up after that and the structure from there is about the same with both gender.

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Altaeyyr In reply to humite [2012-12-23 00:58:24 +0000 UTC]

Oh, well see now that just makes logical sense. I always wondered why they didn't have a step like that myself.
Hmm, I haven't finished reading the series yet (doing my reread, but I never finished 13) so I must have missed the point about becoming immune to the a'dam but that's ok. I figured there had to be some way of countering it, it's too overpowered otherwise.

Anyway, that's well thought out. Good job.

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