Dr. Bret Devereaux

I'm at the bottom of the hill.

This is not ideal.

And so I have to endure their attacks.

And that becomes a problem because they can attack.

Cohesion breaks down.

They back up.

They reform.

They attack again.

They can keep coming at you, which offsets your advantage in offensive punch and cohesion and allows them to wear you down, which is what eventually happens.

Yeah, he's let his imagination get away with him.

Again, this is one of those elements that I looked at, and I'm like, this is in the heroic mold.

Clearly, I think what he seems to be thinking with are English yeoman longbowmen of the Hundred Years' War, and especially that language of a rain of arrows or a hail of arrows is exactly how our sources from that period talk about the experience of being on the business end.

of large bodies of English longbowmen, that it was a ring or a hail just continuously coming in.

That said, you know, as you said, an L is about 45 inches.

That's a lot for an arrow.

Longbow arrows top out around 36 inches for really big guys, but of course the Numenoreans are really, really big guys.

I know some Manchu bows get out to draws of 40, 41 inches, but that's the largest I know of.

So those are just, those are kind of absurdly big.

But then we're told that the Numenoreans are absurdly big guys.

They're physically larger and heroically built.