#raanalysis

Throughout books 5 and 6, Malcolm, AKA “Malkalam the Sorcerer”, is thought to pull off feats of sorcery that we later discover are related to chemistry and science. Although we do find out his so-called sorcery is just science, we never find out how he does his “magic.”

The first “act of sorcery” Malcolm pulls off, is launching signal rockets and having them explode. How did he do that? I believe he did it using a combination known as black powder. Black powder contains a mixture of potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. To create this combination you need 75% saltpeter, 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur. Black powder was discovered by ancient Chinese alchemists and was used to create fireworks AND signals just like Malcolm does. The alchemists discovered black powder through experimenting with life-preserving elixirs, which I believe is quite ironic because they were trying to preserve life and ended up creating guns because the last function of black powder is gunpowder.

Now, back to Malcolm. I believe he used black powder because, just like fireworks, the signal rocket flew into the air and “exploded in a shower of sparks.” That sounds a lot like fireworks and it even mentions the word “fireworks” when the Siege of Macindaw was ending and Will was thinking about the recent battle. That seems like pretty clear evidence that Malcolm used black powder.

The only catch is that the Chinese discovered the combination long before the Europeans. However, the Europeans DID have access to all the ingredients required. We also know that Malcolm is a skilled chemist, so it is not impossible to say he discovered the mixture before the rest of Araluen/England and wanted to keep his secret mixture, just that, a secret! Malcolm wants to keep his patients safe, through the “sorcery of Grimsdell Wood” and if people found out his “magic” was just a few chemicals it would greatly reduce the aura of fear and mystery surrounding Grimsdell.

The second and last magic trick Malcolm pulls off is when they have captured General MacHaddish, the leader of the band of Scotti, who were going to take over Castle Macindaw. After they capture him, they try to question him by using Serthek’nish, a Scotti demon that steals souls. To add to the illusion, Malcolm puts a packet of an unknown substance in the fire and the fire flares up and goes back down, making it look like Serthek’nish is tampering with the flame. To make the fire flare, I don’t think Malcolm used chemicals at all, I think he used wood dust. Wood dust is a highly flammable substance that is a byproduct of all wood manufacturing. Which means that Malcolm could have easily acquired it and it matches the description of the flare. Wood dust explosions flare highly for 1-2 seconds then die back down, just like the book says. To make the wood dust catch on fire, you need two things, a heat source, which is the fire that was already burning, and you need a partially contained place, the gaps between the logs.

Lastly, these chemicals are VERY dangerous and should NOT be used without proper training. Even the wood dust can cause cancer unless proper precautions are in place. So be CAREFUL with chemicals, they are DANGEROUS!

Thank you to rangerdylanuttam for this analysis! It’s exciting to have different people from the community be a part of this, so if you would like to be an RA Analysis writer, let us know! We’d love to have you :) Join in on the conversation by either sending us an ask, or by reblogging this analysis and tagging it #raanalysis with your thoughts. Do you have questions or thoughts on future analysis’? Please send us an ask or submit it to us.

Hi Anon! Don’t worry – your English is practically perfect in every way!

When it comes to Wargals, there’s not actually that much we know before Morgarath brainwashed them into the killing machines we’ve gotten to know in the main series. The most information we have can be found in the prequels. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to describe everything we know based on what they were like before, during and after Morgarath.

Before Morgarath

All of our information on the Wargals before Morgarath comes from Tournament at Gorlan and Battle at Hackham Heath. For this, I’m going to include the Wargal’s actions shown at the beginning of Morgarath’s control over them, as it says that he hadn’t gotten complete control over them by Hackham Heath and their ancient customs sometimes seeps through.

Before Morgarath, the Wargals were a recluse race that was broken into tribes. Each tribe had their own chieftain and – if the tribe structure is similar to ours – elders who would help pass on their customs and stories. Because of this, they had fierce familial ties and felt death and loss intensely. They lived in caves in the Mountains of Rain and Night and were carnivores. While they communicated mainly through thoughts in their hive-mind, they could also communicate through different toned grunts and they even had songs.

Wargals were known to be peaceful in general but could be incredibly savage and brutal when provoked. For example, Norman was able to live peacefully with them for years as long as he kept to himself, but they had violently rebelled against King Prescott when he tried to turn them into an army but lost control of them after a drunken phase.

After Morgarath

In the first few books of RA, Flanagan describes the Wargals as one minded, senseless killing machines. They are mainly fearless with their biggest weakness being horses, and they can take multiple hits before succumbing to their wounds.

Physically, they are quick but incredibly clumsy and prefer to fight with their hands but will also use weapons like axes, maces, clubs and swords. They are also capable of fighting strategically and independently, as shown with the death of Dirk Reacher in BB. Some of them are bred specifically for their size, strength, and savagery, as Halt notices a special unit of Wargals attacking the right flank in his retelling of his meeting with Daniel in LS.

As far as social hierarchies are concerned, they are a highly hierarchical group but only in the same way that the military is strongly separated by ranks. A few times it is made clear that one Wargal may have more power over others or capable of more independent thought than those in the common ranks.

Post Morgarath

After Morgarath’s defeat in BB, it’s difficult to say whether they returned to their previous ways of living or not. They are described as child-like and purposeless, which isn’t what they were like before. This could be because of two reasons: Flanagan wrote the Wargals before he had fully fleshed out their society, or that the Wargals were so connected to Morgarath for so long, that a significant amount of their minds had lost the ability to function without him. Remember, it is possible that the majority of Wargals at that time weren’t alive in a time without Morgarath. And without their tribal chieftains and elders to help them process and learn their ways, the Wargal hive-mind would have been metaphorically lost. I’m not actually sure if they could ever recover from it – especially if all of their elders and those who lived before had already died.

 Sorry this took so long to answer. It was a really good question and I honestly don’t know why it took me so long. Like always, I hope you guys liked and understood all of that! Join in on the conversation by either sending us an ask, or by reblogging this analysis and tagging it #raanalysis with your thoughts. Do you have questions or thoughts on future analysis? Please send us an ask or submit it to us.

If you are interested in becoming a RA Analysis writer, let us know! We’d love to have you :)

To those who have joined since my last post - welcome! I’m the Admin of RA Analysis. This is a blog dedicated to discussing and exploring the Ranger’s Apprentice series. To those who have been here a while - hello again! Sorry for the large gap of nothingness that has been this blog for two or so years! Teaching has definitely been harder than previously expected. 

But now I’m back! And I’m going to be trying a new system of posting for next year, so hopefully they’ll be some form of consistency with the release of new content. I’m really excited to be back and I hope you are too.

If you have sent in a question or a topic to look at and I haven’t responded yet, you are the first on my list to answer. Thank you for your patience, especially for one question in particular that I think has been waiting for over three years to be answered. It shall happen!

And if you haven’t sent one in yet but would like to, please do! If there’s a question that has been bugging you for ages, or a topic you’d like explored or discussed more, then please send an ask my way! If you’d like to write an analysis, then do the same thing! I’d love to feature your thoughts. Just remember - this is a family friendly blog. All asks should keep this in mind. 

Here’s to a new year of analysing and conversation!

Hello everyone! 

I would like to welcome those who have recently joined the RA Analysis community and/or the RA fandom as a whole. We are quite a friendly bunch and are happy to engage in any discussions, role plays, headcanons, and activities based on John Flanagan’s book series.

For those who have been with us for longer, I would like to say thank you for all of your support. This blog has been going on for about 2 years now, and I could not have done this without you.

Before you start thinking it: no, this is not my farewell post. I wanted to keep you updated and explain why this blog has been a little inconsistent over the past year. As many of you may not know, I have been studying to be a high school teacher. The postgraduate degree that I have been completing for the past year has a reputation for being one of the hardest and most demanding degrees within the education sector. Essentially, they try to cram four years of study into one. This meant that I was completing 15 to 16 assessment items in a 9 week time frame before going straight into a 6 week prac (where I actually go into a school and teach). Instead of posting once a month as planned, it became whenever I had the time or the mental energy.

As you can probably understand, this has been very stressful. But again, this is where I cannot thank you enough. Despite these inconsistencies, you were still supportive, encouraging, and engaged. I love reading your thoughts on posts and the fact that discussions were made reminds me of why I started this blog. I started it for us - the fandom. I wanted to create a place where people could share their thoughts and ideas about the minute aspects of the book series we all love. And I could not have done this without each and every single one of you.

As for this coming year, I will again try to keep to the once a month posts. Teachers often say that the first year of teaching is the busiest, so there may be times when they may not come out as frequently as usual, but I promise that I will try.

When I first read the Icebound Land, I was about 11 or 12. This meant that I was rather naïve and didn’t pick up on a lot of the subtleties that can be found in the RA series. Throughout the years, I have found more and more of them. Except for perhaps the most obvious one in the Icebound Land. So, if you’re like me and don’t really pick up on these sort of things, then I’m sorry to pop your bubble like this.

There are prostitutes in Ranger’s Apprentice.

Now, like I said before, I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only one who didn’t pick up on this. But when Halt and Horace first arrive in Gallica at La Rivage, Horace notices three young women laughing at him, all wearing rather short skirts. They are not, as Halt had explained, Couriers, but prostitutes. In Medieval Europe, prostitution was a very profitable business. While the Catholic Church actively condemned all sexual activity outside of marriage, they tolerated it based on the idea that it stops other, eviler sins from occurring, such as sodomy and masturbation. Prostitutes and brothels were commonly found near ports, as there was a larger population of people ‘seeking relief’ from their time on the sea. While Flanagan’s description of the prostitutes wearing short skirts is historically inaccurate, it is a modern image connected to a promiscuous woman.

But that’s not all. After I had discovered this information, I remembered about the plants that Horace notices on their way out of the village. Originally, I had thought they were corn. Horace describes them as such: “large, broad leaves on stalks that stood as high as a man’s head were left to dry and seemingly to wither on the stalk before they were gathered”. When a specific type of corn called dent corn is harvested, they leave it to dry on the stalks. This ensures that the corn is fully matured before turning it into cattle food (or fuel and plastics in this modern age). Sweet corn (what is usually sold and eaten by humans) is picked a full month before dent corn when the corn is in early maturation. It is entirely possible that this is what Horace sees. Except for one thing: corn is native to the Americas. It wasn’t introduced to Europe until Columbus in the late 1400s. So what else could it be?

Marijuana.

Marijuana has been propagated throughout the world since the 3rd millennium BC(E). We know this as cannabis seeds have been found in a ritual brazier at an ancient Romanian site that dates back to this time. During this period, marijuana was used in medicine and religion. Marijuana plants have broad leaves and their stalks can grow up to 6 feet, especially when grown outside. When harvested, marijuana plants grow white hairs, giving an image of withered-ness, and their leaves can either be collected and hung to dry (as described in the book) or left on the stalk to dry naturally, which is known to create a far more potent product.

So if you were like me and had never picked up on this, then I’m sorry to ruin your childhood. If not, then I probably seem like a very naïve person (which I am). Join in on the conversation by either sending us an ask, or by reblogging this analysis and tagging it with your thoughts. Do you have questions or thoughts on future analyses? Please send us an ask or submit it to us.

If you are interested in becoming a RA Analysis writer or in doing a one off, let us know! We’d love to have you :)

The Courier Code is a secret way of messaging used by the Araluen Diplomatic Services and Ranger Corps. As readers, the first (and practically only) time we hear about it is in The Siege of Macindaw, when Will is sending messages to Alyss in Castle Macindaw. Although Flanagan describes it in detail, this is a handy little visual to show what it would look like.

The first thing Flanagan does is to arrange 24 letters of the alphabet into rows and columns. The end result looks like this (tumblr doesn’t like tables, so they’re jpegs instead):

W and Z would be substituted with V and S if necessary, which I have added in the table above.

The format of the message would be set in a square outline. The sender would shift a light to a corner of the square before flashing the light a certain amount of times. The letter’s row number corresponds to the corner it’s in, and its column number is how many times the light flashes. The format would look like this (row numbers 1 – 4 in the corners; column number in the middle):

In this case, for the letter I, the sender would put the light in the top right hand corner of the square, and then flash in the middle three times, as shown here:

This is what the rest of the alphabet would look like. And remember: the left and right is according to the receiver. The sender needs to flip it for themselves (i.e. left corner becomes their right corner).

Hopfully this is useful for people! Join in on the conversation by either sending us an ask, or by reblogging this analysis and tagging it with your thoughts. Do you have questions or thoughts on future analyses? Please send us an ask or submit it to us.

If you are interested in becoming a RA Analysis writer or in doing a one off, let us know! We’d love to have you :)