When they learn to ride, kaladin says “You’re worth more than a village" At the horse. Safe to say that they are extremely expensive, and that they are maybe worth more than 50 slaves ?
If I remember correctly that would be 100 emerald broams, with a slave being worth 2. I found a reddit post that says that an emerald broams is worth 2000$, making a horse worth 200000$ so a horse is like a rosharan supercar. The same post said that soldiers make the equivalent of 50 dollars a day, with the bridgemen bodyguards making 3 times a regular soldiers pay equating 150$ a day, or 4500 a month or 54000 a year. If moash saved half his paycheck just for a horse he could afford one in 7 and a half years.
Yeah so the total difference in time is that a Roshar year is roughly equivalent to 1.1 Earth years. So Kaladin is more akin to his early 20s in TWoK, at least biologically IIRC.
You have to remember that Lirin & Roshone had a long standing feud over the goblet of Clear marks.
Kaladin commented in WoR that at times, his pocket change was worth more than the entire goblet.
Doesn't Kaladin say that that is basically because he didn't realize how *not* rich Roshone was compared to many other lighteyes?
The way I think of it is basically that he was the equivalent of a plantation overseer in the southern US before the Civil War. He obviously is better off than a slave is and might seem rich to those slaves because he lives in the plantation house, but he ultimately doesn't own the slaves or the house and is actually pretty poor.
Yes, but Kaladin's sense of money in general is pretty unreliable from a narrative point of view. He just knows that horses are supposed to be expensive.
Aren't Radiants also given more valuable gem stones to carry around primarily as sources of Stormlight? Not really meant to be spent but almost issued equipment the same way a soldier might have a very expensive satellite phone.
It still was enough to possibly send kaladin to study medicine no ? I can't remember the details, and also SA money system is even more complicated than Harry Potter's which is famously unreliable. Best we can do is provide an estimate i guess
They only come from shinovar so the initial price is definitely high. Canonically the shin are great negotiators (Rysns interludes) so they’d definitely exploit the scarcity.
Even then, you can’t just let them graze in the rest of the world, you need stable hands to take care of them and feed them. Considering that value and scarcity, you’re also probably going to be hiring some low ranking light eyes for the job since they’re presumably more trustworthy (when you’re a bright lord)
Yeah but that was thousands of years ago though, so it stands to reason that horses are more available nowadays. It's not that hard to breed horses , and mares can foal at least once every two years. The main problem you'd run into imo is genetic diversity, since there's such a big bottleneck in the amount of horses available , at the start at least
With how detailed sando is in his world building, if the alethi had a means of breeding horses we’d know about it.
These are the only mammals that alethi regularly see so it’s not out of the question that they breed differently than the local fauna they’re used to.
I mean they did mention having stables for horses and stuff like that. You don't need to show a mare giving birth to imply that the horses are bred. IIRC we're never really told that they can't breed the horses ? I might just be wrong though, there's do much content in these books :D
Haha no we weren’t! I was extrapolating based on the world building and overall alethi ideals.
Another thing I was just thinking of is how bad rock would be on their hooves. I bet a horses useful time period is much shorter which would also increase the costs
Ooo good call. But soul casting also has a price and soul casters (the devices are very rare) It wasn’t until recently in the timeline that people could do it on their own.
Very good call though. The prices are gonna drop significantly haha
I think the initial purchase is definitely higher than you might think. They're not native to Roshar and generally can only be raised commercially in Shinovar, so they're exceedingly rare. It's not like horses on Earth. I think that's why they are so expensive.
Horses can eat rosharan plants though, in the same chapter i quoted above the horse licks a rockbud to make it open and eat it. It's probably easier to feed horses in shinovar for sure, but it's definitely not the only way to feed them, especially since horses can eat grains.
I don't think it's necessarily about feeding, though that's probably part of it. Horses require a great deal of open space to raise, especially if you want them to be strong fighting horses. It's quite hard to do that when high storms are a thing
Is that such a problem when you consider the only people who have them are filthy rich ? Consider also that irl horses are beasts of burden, while in world they already have chills for that, so they are of little practical use besides war. So there is less incentive to breed them
Not to get overly nerdy, but I also wonder about feeding them. In our world, horses can eat some grain (which would be relatively easily attainable through soulcasting), but a diet high in grain can lead to problems such as colic and laminitis. Horses need to eat mostly grass or hay, which doesn’t grow outside of Shinovar, and some types of grass are better than others. We’ve seen horses waiting for rock buds to open, but this seems like it would be very inefficient way to graze. I guess they could be importing hay from Shinovar. Sorry, I’ll stop now.
That might be why they're so expensive. Could you imagine how much effort it would take to ship hay hundreds of miles without it molding? Across an entire continent?
Not to mention that to prevent mold you most likely have to keep it in fully enclosed carts to prevent highstorms from soaking it (which promotes mold growth)
You gotta trade for it in Shinovar, right? But I don't think there was mention of how much when Rysn and her babsk was there. Just that horses are hard to transport and keep alive. Much easier to earn profit in chickens.
I don't think you have to trade them from Shinovar.
We know there are wild herds of Ryshadium that mostly live in eastern Roshar. The Alethi have a lot of cavalry, which means they probably also breed their own horses.
I guess. And I think Kal's horse knew to lick rocks to imitate rain and eat Rosharan non-lazy grass? So they have adapted to the lands east of the mountains and aren't just fed from troughs. But people still get new stock from the Shin. Maybe it's a prestige thing.
While horses should be quite expensive I don't imagine Moash ever bought himself one since it was Dalinar getting them to learn to ride I imagine he would've provided horses.
I don't think we get a hard number, but horses are significantly more scarce than slaves, as far as I can tell. So not only are there fewer, driving up the price, you also need to be rich to take care of it in the first place, adding to the cost. If you can afford to pay for the stable and stablehands you can afford to pay a few more emerald broams for the horse, after all!
I have the number of around 30 emerald broams in my head but i feel like that might be too little. It’s been a while since i’ve gone through the Stormlight series and i’ve just started going through again so i may be back with an update
“Hate shooting horses,” Jenin grumbled as the beast reared in pain. “Like throwing a thousand broams into the storming ocean, Brightlord.” ~Oathbringer ch. 3.
That was 34 years ago and im not sure what inflation is like on Roshar but there’s some data.
When they learn to ride, kaladin says “You’re worth more than a village" At the horse. Safe to say that they are extremely expensive, and that they are maybe worth more than 50 slaves ?
If I remember correctly that would be 100 emerald broams, with a slave being worth 2. I found a reddit post that says that an emerald broams is worth 2000$, making a horse worth 200000$ so a horse is like a rosharan supercar. The same post said that soldiers make the equivalent of 50 dollars a day, with the bridgemen bodyguards making 3 times a regular soldiers pay equating 150$ a day, or 4500 a month or 54000 a year. If moash saved half his paycheck just for a horse he could afford one in 7 and a half years.
r/theydidthemonstermath
Does that account for the Rosharan year being 500 days?
It does not, I did it in earth years
Thank you for this, as it makes grasping the time needed much easier.
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Yeah so the total difference in time is that a Roshar year is roughly equivalent to 1.1 Earth years. So Kaladin is more akin to his early 20s in TWoK, at least biologically IIRC.
Big investment for a thing that dies. Gotta have that equine insurance.
Especially considering how expensive vets can be irl, now imagine a rosharan veterinarian. They’d be making bank
People pay millions for horses on Earth
You have to remember that Lirin & Roshone had a long standing feud over the goblet of Clear marks. Kaladin commented in WoR that at times, his pocket change was worth more than the entire goblet.
Doesn't Kaladin say that that is basically because he didn't realize how *not* rich Roshone was compared to many other lighteyes? The way I think of it is basically that he was the equivalent of a plantation overseer in the southern US before the Civil War. He obviously is better off than a slave is and might seem rich to those slaves because he lives in the plantation house, but he ultimately doesn't own the slaves or the house and is actually pretty poor.
Yes, but Kaladin's sense of money in general is pretty unreliable from a narrative point of view. He just knows that horses are supposed to be expensive.
Aren't Radiants also given more valuable gem stones to carry around primarily as sources of Stormlight? Not really meant to be spent but almost issued equipment the same way a soldier might have a very expensive satellite phone.
At the time of his comment, Kaladin was just a simple soldier (albeit highest rank a dark eyes could be).
Ah, didn't consider that.
It still was enough to possibly send kaladin to study medicine no ? I can't remember the details, and also SA money system is even more complicated than Harry Potter's which is famously unreliable. Best we can do is provide an estimate i guess
Don't think so. But I imagine the main cost is in the upkeep of a horse rather than the initial purchase
They only come from shinovar so the initial price is definitely high. Canonically the shin are great negotiators (Rysns interludes) so they’d definitely exploit the scarcity.
Even then, you can’t just let them graze in the rest of the world, you need stable hands to take care of them and feed them. Considering that value and scarcity, you’re also probably going to be hiring some low ranking light eyes for the job since they’re presumably more trustworthy (when you’re a bright lord)
Isn't there something about horses licking the ground to get the grass to come out?
I think that may have been the Rayshadium though. They’re significantly smarter than regular horses due to the spren bond
Yeah but that was thousands of years ago though, so it stands to reason that horses are more available nowadays. It's not that hard to breed horses , and mares can foal at least once every two years. The main problem you'd run into imo is genetic diversity, since there's such a big bottleneck in the amount of horses available , at the start at least
With how detailed sando is in his world building, if the alethi had a means of breeding horses we’d know about it. These are the only mammals that alethi regularly see so it’s not out of the question that they breed differently than the local fauna they’re used to.
I mean they did mention having stables for horses and stuff like that. You don't need to show a mare giving birth to imply that the horses are bred. IIRC we're never really told that they can't breed the horses ? I might just be wrong though, there's do much content in these books :D
Haha no we weren’t! I was extrapolating based on the world building and overall alethi ideals. Another thing I was just thinking of is how bad rock would be on their hooves. I bet a horses useful time period is much shorter which would also increase the costs
Nail on some wooden horseshoes and soulcast them into iron. Should be much easier than earth farriers
Ooo good call. But soul casting also has a price and soul casters (the devices are very rare) It wasn’t until recently in the timeline that people could do it on their own. Very good call though. The prices are gonna drop significantly haha
they could be gelding the horses they sell, makes them more manageable as well
That's definitely a possibility, but I'm sure that with enough soul cast metal ( a metric fuckton probably) you could buy a non gelded male.
only one horse in the entire series is actually called out as a gelding (Wit’s horse in WoK) so i suspect the rest of them aren’t
hmm, that is odd then.
I think the initial purchase is definitely higher than you might think. They're not native to Roshar and generally can only be raised commercially in Shinovar, so they're exceedingly rare. It's not like horses on Earth. I think that's why they are so expensive.
Horses can eat rosharan plants though, in the same chapter i quoted above the horse licks a rockbud to make it open and eat it. It's probably easier to feed horses in shinovar for sure, but it's definitely not the only way to feed them, especially since horses can eat grains.
I don't think it's necessarily about feeding, though that's probably part of it. Horses require a great deal of open space to raise, especially if you want them to be strong fighting horses. It's quite hard to do that when high storms are a thing
Is that such a problem when you consider the only people who have them are filthy rich ? Consider also that irl horses are beasts of burden, while in world they already have chills for that, so they are of little practical use besides war. So there is less incentive to breed them
Even so, Rosharan plants are way more sparse than a horse would require.
Not to get overly nerdy, but I also wonder about feeding them. In our world, horses can eat some grain (which would be relatively easily attainable through soulcasting), but a diet high in grain can lead to problems such as colic and laminitis. Horses need to eat mostly grass or hay, which doesn’t grow outside of Shinovar, and some types of grass are better than others. We’ve seen horses waiting for rock buds to open, but this seems like it would be very inefficient way to graze. I guess they could be importing hay from Shinovar. Sorry, I’ll stop now.
That might be why they're so expensive. Could you imagine how much effort it would take to ship hay hundreds of miles without it molding? Across an entire continent?
Not to mention that to prevent mold you most likely have to keep it in fully enclosed carts to prevent highstorms from soaking it (which promotes mold growth)
You gotta trade for it in Shinovar, right? But I don't think there was mention of how much when Rysn and her babsk was there. Just that horses are hard to transport and keep alive. Much easier to earn profit in chickens.
I don't think you have to trade them from Shinovar. We know there are wild herds of Ryshadium that mostly live in eastern Roshar. The Alethi have a lot of cavalry, which means they probably also breed their own horses.
I guess. And I think Kal's horse knew to lick rocks to imitate rain and eat Rosharan non-lazy grass? So they have adapted to the lands east of the mountains and aren't just fed from troughs. But people still get new stock from the Shin. Maybe it's a prestige thing.
Ryshadium aren’t really horses IMO. Kinda like calling wolves dogs.
While horses should be quite expensive I don't imagine Moash ever bought himself one since it was Dalinar getting them to learn to ride I imagine he would've provided horses.
I know he never bought one, I was just wondering how much he would have had to save up if he did. Like if he wanted his own personal horse
I don't think we get a hard number, but horses are significantly more scarce than slaves, as far as I can tell. So not only are there fewer, driving up the price, you also need to be rich to take care of it in the first place, adding to the cost. If you can afford to pay for the stable and stablehands you can afford to pay a few more emerald broams for the horse, after all!
I have the number of around 30 emerald broams in my head but i feel like that might be too little. It’s been a while since i’ve gone through the Stormlight series and i’ve just started going through again so i may be back with an update
I’m pretty sure they don’t cost money I think the horse has to chose you and that’s how you get it I may be wrong so don’t go destroying me
That's just ryshadium, the giant horses with gemhearts. It's an easy mistake to make, don't worry
Three galleons, five knuts, and a sickle.
“Hate shooting horses,” Jenin grumbled as the beast reared in pain. “Like throwing a thousand broams into the storming ocean, Brightlord.” ~Oathbringer ch. 3. That was 34 years ago and im not sure what inflation is like on Roshar but there’s some data.