Liquid

I guess I should change my profile picture now

Well, that was unexpected!

@Monica

Maybe I could rethink a good part of the slave force as disposable miners, as those temporary tunnels would need to be dig up fast and there's a considerable risk of them crumbling over.

@VLAZ Probably the question can't be answered without figuring it out tunnel warfare better. I'm just realizing that now.

Probably enlarging the tunnel near a battle would be unfeasible, but I guess than when the ground permits it there would be skilled cave engineers and miners. Traps and side-passages could be created to launch ambushes at the enemy.

@LiJun I was thinking something like classic armor, so Hastati seem fine.

@VLAZ Agreed: yet I don't get why we don't move this discussion into an answer. Grenade usage could be implied and could make a backless armor stupidly useless, I realize that.

@StarfishPrime Yea, I know; but it isn't what most part of medieval warfare revolved around. It seemed more like a funny comment for the sake of it, to me.

@Kepotx In a tunnel system they would have lesser options to flee (rather than in a open field). Where do you flee if you can either go forward into the enemy line or fall back into yours? Since space would be vital, frenzies group of fleeing slaves could be a problem for the enemy armies. Also, in the chaos of battle, I doubt it would be so easy to tell apart "fleeing" slaves from "charging" ones, and false retreats are often used as a battle tactic.

@SZCZERZOKŁY Top 10 medieval weapons

@Obie2.0 that's an interesting observation and it probably deserves to be in its own answer. A story about a chess master winning a chess tournament is not "the author giving special privileges to the main character". And I don't agree completely with your narrative that who isn't special can't reach grand accomplishments.

Yea, I was just puzzled. I still don't get it, tho. Were hobbits a sub-species of elves? I can't seem to recall.

@bruglesco Last of a mystical race? Also the armor is not impenetrable, the magic rings actively tries to mess with his mind, and I lost you on the armies part.

@Galastel I'd add that to the question,to make it more answerable, then. The decision to write about it or not is still on you, but it's a pretty big detail, and it narrows down the scope for potential answerers.

The answer may as well reside in how much you want child mortality rate be a theme in your novel. A lot of things happened in pre-Industrial Revolution times that are different from our modern times; and more still that would clash with our perception of life. Realism is good and all, but you can't possibly hope to talk about everything while moving the plot along. How much is this theme relevant to you and to the novel?

@Neuromancer yes, with a standard full-time contract.

@Mołot I'm in southern EU.

@J.Doe The 15 minutes, remote fix are the arguments I could take on personally. Again, I'm judging based on the previous experience, which was around 30 minutes actually contributing, and the rest almost literaly being in a corner.

@sboesch I'll clarify in the question too. I do not get paid for the travel time; I do get reimbursed for the ticket cost. The cllient doesn't expect us to do a regular 9-18, so we were able to get in later (10:20) and get out a little earlier (17.40). So around 1 hour and a half of travel time was during work hours, and in this sense, paid. The other is treated like normal commute to work.

@UIO Normally I'd agree in a general case. But from my previous experience in the same setting, I'm skeptical of how much "learning value" this opportunity yelds.

@Twyxz I don't want to do it because I am not capable of doing it, in the current condition, with the information / training I've been given. The travel time is a nice addition to that.

" how do I, who have grown attached to both of the characters and want them both to succeed, do so in a way that doesn't seem like I'm settling for one or the other? " I'd point out that being an author doesn't mean you can always be nice with your characters. I want all my best characters to succeed, but sometimes the plot needs to go in certain directions, and they will get scarred. Badly, even.

Are you paid for all your hours? In my country, 40 hours is the week fulltime standard, and any extra work hour has to be compensated somewhat.

Downvoted. This is not harsh, it's judgemental, and also doesn't answer OP's question.

@Amadeus Surely you've got a point about the sound effect, but I still don't agree in general. Inventing a language or a slang isn't supposed to sound like an existing one; if it was, there would be no point in inventing at all. It may be useful as a device, yes, but it shouldn't be necessary nor advisable. Readers aren't stupid, they can catch that "Author-of-Life" stands for "God", if used with sense and consistency.

If the swear words are from another language alltogether, I fail to see how the "audio effect needs to be somewhat similar" to regular english. The reader should infer swear words by context, no amount of frak is going to help there.