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Sand Mastery Discussion


speedreader9000

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It is actually both.

 

"She gestured him over to three piles of sand.  One was white, one black, and the final one a crystalline brownish color." pg. 689 / 1067, in my version of the document.

 

Here's where I'm going with this.  As we have briefly seen in stormlight archive, investiture can actually help certain organisms to grow and thrive, seemingly acting as a replacement or substitute for things that would ordinarily be required for live, like complex nutrients, etc.  It is, after all, a little bit of the power of creation.

 

 So, we have a life form (the lichen that forms on sand) that seems to be the primary source of energy for the entire ecosystem of dayside.  Sandlings either eat the lichen off of sand or other sandlings.  And humans grow vegetables in sand that seems like it shouldn't be able to support nutritious crops, but sandling is also a staple of the human diet.  One way or another, this lichen is the cornerstone of sustenance for life on dayside.  It also appears to be invested. It also seems like this investment process may somehow resemble photosynthesis (as Yata has asserted). However, unlike most forms of life that we are familiar with, coming into contact with water actually causes it to lose the energy that it has been able to store. It releases investiture when it gets wet, or when it is mastered (which somehow combines it with the water from a sand masters body).......or maybe also when it is eaten???  

 

(I know this is not a particularly organised string of thoughts...thanks for bearing with me.)

 

So...some sandlings eat the lichen, using the investiture that the lichen has stored to provide metabolic energy, and using the physical makeup of the lichen as the building blocks for their own bodies.  Some other sandlings eat other sandlings, transferring that metabolic energy to themselves, and once again using the physical makeup of the victim sandling's body to construct their own.  It stands to reason that the larger sandlings get, the more they have to subsist on larger sandlings as prey, becoming the apex predators of the ecosystem (in deep sand anyway).  However, the downside of sandlings being constructed almost entirely of this lichen (on a basic level) is that something about the physical makeup of all of these living things breaks down when exposed to water...even big, old sandlings that are somehow terken are vulnerable to harm from water.  

 

One of the things that seems counter intuitive to this line of thought, is that water doesn't dissolve the lichen, it simply forces it to expel it's stored investiture.  ????????????????

 

EDIT: Just to add something...in numerology, "terken" means 1.  I know it is seriously reaching...but the number 1 stands alone...or...is autonomous. 

 

EDIT: While I realize that I'm getting away from "Sand Mastery" and focusing more on the ecology of dayside...I find it interesting that sandlings appear to have a perfect metabolism (at least the herbivorous ones).  That is to say, they ingest sand covered in lichen, and excrete sand with no lichen.  No other substance seems to be generated as waste or byproduct of their bodily functions.  This makes me wonder a lot more about the pnumadic

Ah my bad. Crystalline stuck in my head, and when I hear that, I picture quartz crystal. good catch. Regarding dissolving the lichen, I am not so sure that it doesn't. Water does not dissolve sandling carapace into nothing, it makes it liquid till it dries out again. That is where nearly all food and a lot of goods comes from. Dissolve carapace into a puddle, leave out to dry, spice and now you have zaipon. Take a carapace and a wet cloth, running it along to make an edge, now you have a sword. Dropplets of water act as a "drill" creating a hole to make desks and such. So as far as we know, sand that is wet is dissolved film. 

Edited by Pathfinder
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