Worldbringer of JoSeun

To go with a very shaky foundation (partly because I don't have any of my books and partly because I will be making several assumptions as part of my hypothesis), perhaps Nightblood isn't overpowered. He seems to be the equivalent of a spren and when a STORMLIGHT ARCHIVE SPOILER We know that shardblades kill on the spiritual realm. We also have seen in in Mistborn and Stormlight Archive that magic interacts differently with living beings and lifeforms. I suspect that if Nightblood was to kill a person directly at full power, then he would do it differently than how he kills non-lifeforms. Going with that assumption that Nightblood acts in similar manners to shardblades, I think we could say that Nightblood is killing and interacting more directly with spiritual and cognitive realms than shardblades are. If so, then Nightblood is just stronger than the shardblades. Or possibly the shardblades are holding back on part of their strength because they live in those realms and have to interact with what they kill and Nightblood doesn't. If shardblades are actually holding back their full strength just like how professional fighters hold back their full strength and skill while sparring, then Nightblood is more like a bully that doesn't play by the rules of polite warfare. And as for why Nightblood is stealing breath, well, the Nahl bond takes the Stormlight of the human but it seems more like how two atoms might share electrons between each other. Nightblood might be more like a chlorine atom and just takes an electron from what is nearby. He is of a fundamentally different type of spiritual/cognitive (wish I understood the full difference between the two in the Cosmere) element. As such, Nightblood has different properties than Shardblades. They are both primarily spiritual/cognitive beings but their composition is different. If the idea that Nightblood is elementally different is correct, then Nightblood isn't overpowered. It is just different. More like chlorine (a deadly poison) than a metal (an excellent conductor - which given Voidbringer abilities would explain why Knight Radiants would rather use Shardblades instead of Awakened objects to fight their destined foe). I don't know which would be more accurate. I would guess the spiritual elemental idea simply because Sanderson studied chemistry before switching his major to literature. He might have decided to treat the cognitive and spiritual realms as being similar to chemical interactions. EDIT: As I was searching through the interview database (wondering about what would happen if someone soulcasted a shardblade by the way), I found multiple quotes saying that Nightblood was more invested than Shardblades as well as Nightblood being a type of Shardblade. So my idea is debunked. And the links to the Nightblood and Shardblades are below. Nightblood is more powerful than a shardblade. #34t Nightblood is an unique shardblade. #15 Nightblood and shardblades being full of investure #51

Well, it is farfetched but out of all the Sel magics that I have seen, Elantrian magics are the only ones whose strength depends on distance. Now a part of that could be due to the Aon Rao but why would Rao vary according to distance? Wouldn't it just amplify anywhere? Could it possibly be that the Aon Ela tells the amplifying effect to focus on Elantris? There are ways to modify Aons so that they would have effect but this might be an Aon Equation. It would be a small Aon Ela inside Aon Rao's center. I don't know much about Aon Equations (I am just basing this off the coppermind wiki) but if an Aon could be drawn inside another Aon in order to modify the other Aons then I guess Aon Ela would center or focus Aon Rao on ... where? Probably Elantris since that is where most of the focus on AonDor through Aons is strongest. If so it would explain why it is so strong in Elantris and weaker in foreign nations, even in the high day of Elantris's power. Ela tells the AonDor to focus its power on Elantris rather than spreading the power across the world. Now, this could prove to be interesting especially since Aon Rao is repaired but Aon Ela is still broken. I imagine that with Aon Rao flooding power through Elantris, Elantris will have a large power of AonDor available to Aons simply because that is where most of the power enters before leaving but without Aon Ela focusing the power on Elantris, the AonDor might simply flood out of Arelon and eventually settle down to equally blanket the entire world. In which case, the Elantrian's power will come to be strong everywhere, including foreign nations... such as Fjorden. (This could lead to interesting military campaigns. Anyone interested in seeing Elantrian armies with mobile Aon Reos fighting Dakhor monks in Fjarden's capital?). However, as a consequence, perhaps, the AonDor in Elantris after the Reod will be weaker than the AonDor before the Reod unless Aon Ela is repaired. Good eye, EagleOfTheForestPath. It makes Aon Rao make a lot more sense.

There is an advantage to having rithmatists in two seperate circles in a battle than having both in just one. In one of the fights between one of the students (I can't remember his name, I don't have my book with me) and the Scribbler, the student decided to make a series of circles concentric on himself. To reinforce his defenses he drew lines of forbiddence but they all acted together just as a time delay to the wild chalkling's attacks. Once an outer circle was breached, many of the wild chalklings rushed in through the hole and attacked the inner circles. Now, chalklings can't cross lines of warding but rithmatists can. The rithmatist could, theorectically in advance, draw a massive complex defense with two lines of forbidding blocking off an arc of the circle so that no wild chalkling would try to break in from that way. Maybe also throw in some defensive chalklings in there so that it would be foolish to try to penetrate that arc when it is crawling with defensive chalklings. And when the wild chalklings have breached his circle too close for comfort, he can just run over his lines of warding and into a neighboring rithmatist circle, at which point, cooperation between two people in dire straits would become key. Unfortunately, I think this strategy would be quickly observed and counter measures taken by the Forgotten which would make this much more complicated, especially since wild chalklings are faster than humans. Now, back to topic, which is about combining people into one circle in a duel not a battle, remember that while two people in the same circle would be better offensively and defenesively, the problem in a duel comes when the outer circle is breached. Therefore, it doesn't matter that your defense and offense is stronger because you still have the same amount of 'hit points' to use game terms. By taking in another person, you basically agree to share your hit points without gaining any additional health. Once you have a second person, you no longer have the same tradeoff between defense and offense as a single person does. A single person, unless ambidextrous, can only do offense or defense. Two people can choose to have one on offense, one on defense, or both on one or the other. A definite advantage. You can set up defenses at the beginning faster and therefore set up a stronger defense in the time it take for others to set up theirs so that after the intial defense creation stage you can both attack for a brief time before one of you has to focus on repairing and maintaining defenses. So you get a good advantage in the early game against all the rush attackers who will attack without adequete defenses but not quite against the defensive oriented players which means that this advantage trails off towards the end of the duel. But remember in a duel you can't draw a new main circle that you are inside. Defensivewise, you can only use bindpoint circles, defensive chalklings, and lines of forbiddance. Which lines brings us to a new problem with two people. Only the person who made the line of forbiddance can dismiss it. If I am on one side of the circle and my friend had drawn a line of forbiddance in front of me which I need to have dismissed before I can do my action, I have to get his attention, wait for him finish what he is doing, come over and spend 4 seconds dismissing his line of forbiddance before I can do my thing. (The only other alternative is to attack my own defenses which is stupid since it would probably take even more time and would do your enemy's work for them.) That is a lot of time wasted. Time which is very valueable in something like the Melee where dozen of opponents are dueling you, meaning that the two of spent a lot of time on a grand total of two actions during which each of your opponents have had opportunity to to do at least two actions as well. You have effectively lost your advantage of being two people temporarily. You can go and do other things while waiting but it will still require that both of you have to throw away your current plan and create a new plan and thereby throwing off both of your rythems, which will weaken you both. In summary, in exchange for having two people with the same hit points, you have a net ability to fight that is less than two seperate people's combined ability to fight. In such a case, it would make sense to strike up an alliance between yourselves and just have two allies fighting back to back. This way, you could team up and attack one person at the same point for double damage or split the enemy's attention by having one attack at the front (if such a term exists with a circle) and the other attacking at the back. Your opponent would have to keep an eye on two different people in two different locations in order to properly defend. Furthermore, if one of you is attacked, he can focus on defense while the second attacks the attacker and forces him onto defense. In such a, very likely, case of receiving attack, we can see a definite advantage in having two seperate circles. One person defends for a bit and the other attacks the attacker until the defender can join in on the attack as well. If it was one circle then the opponent might be tempted to simply rush attack the two of them. After all, all he needs to do to win is breach a hole in the circle and both attackers/defenders are gone and he gets to look cool. But if there were two circles, if he rush attacks one of them, he will turn to find that he took a lot of damage from the second person while defeating the first person and that the second person's defenses and hitpoints are still fresh. He will have defeated half of the pair but will almost certainly be defeated by the other half of the pair, thus making rush attacking completely pointless since he might win the skirmish but lose the war. There are certainly more complex elements when we see multiple people make alliances. Treachery, what to do if both are last person standing, how to fight against a bigger team of opponents, what to do if you are on opposite sides of the dueling field, ect. But I think we have addressed the points of two people in one circle well enough. Finally and this is probably the major reason that two people don't get in the same circle often, is that this is a duel and has the nature of a duel. You fight, not for victory but for honor and prestige. If you win as a pair, you each get less than half the glory than if either of you were alone since people will think that it is natural that you won since there was two of you and thus decrease the total glory going to you both. Therefore, you gain an advantage at a decrease of your reward. Worse, if you two as a pair lose, than you didn't merely lose like in a game or a sport, but you had an advantage over everyone else and you lost. It would be like playing football with an additional player or two and still losing. You will be mocked and shamed and remembered by everyone as the "cheater" that lost. No honor, and a lot of dishonor. You would even prefer not being remembered than to be remembered as that. In the Grand Melee, Joel and Melody were able to avoid the shame since Joel was not a Rithmatist and so shouldn't have been able to contribute anything to offense or defense and therefore it would have been perceived closer to Melody taking in a disadvantage and then winning by herself. We know that Joel was the mastermind and the person capable of producing Melody's needed defense and offensive strategy for her victory since he was a genuis at Rithmatics but the observers don't know that. They think that "oh, he is just some random, untalented, average kid who managed to legally sneak into the Grand Melee and Melody agreed to take him in (maybe because of a crush or something, wink, wink) and then managed to beat everyone else." They think that Melody was the gracious and skilled one since she is the Rithmatist and did all the work. Or they might not. The book ended before the onlookers were able to analyze the Grand Melee so perhaps in the next book we will see how different people react to Melody and Joel's victory and probably in different ways. In conclusion, the advantage in offense and defense is less than doubled when you put two Rithmatists in the same circle, you have half the hitpoints than if you were seperate, you get an early advantage at the start but at the end the lack of hitpoints stings you worse than your early advantage, you don't have an ally who could pressure your opponents, and people will be drawn to attack you since you are a double kill. In addition to that, you have to share your working space with someone else meaning that you might bump elbows and ruin your chalk drawing. And worse of all, if you win, you get less glory, if you lose, both of you will be looked down upon unfavorably and you will never escape the stigma. Therefore, I doubt that two people in one circle will ever become a popular tatic. It only worked well because Joel was a natural and couldn't do his own drawings and what he could do well (set up ideal tracing lines) was essential to Melody's victory.

My favorite is Hero of Ages followed closely by Way of Kings. Vin was just awesome in her battle against the Inquisitors. While I like the Scribbler a lot, it just doesn't make the same cut as Hero of Ages, even with the chopsticks... I wonder if Brandon will implement chopsticks into the Stormlight Archive in the future?

Hello! I am Worldbringer of JoSeun, a 이 것을 읽으실수 있다면 내가 한국에서 봉사했었은 선교사인 것을 아시겠어요. I have been a Brandon Sanderson fan since I found his books starting with Elantris and ending with Well of Ascension on the library bookshelf. Less than a year after that Hero of Ages came out and I have been a fan along with the rest of my family ever since. I have been more of a lurker having lurked around on TimeWaster's Guide (when it was around). I never registered on TWG but I finally decided that I would like to have the ability to share my crackpotted (and deliciously kimchi flavored) ideas and hypotheses about the Cosmere whenever I wanted. I am a college student and my studies are in fields of science! (with a little kimchi on the side.) If you would like to know the pleasures of highly advanced culture, it would be my great honor to recommend the dish of the great kings of Europe and Asia. I speak of nothing less than the honorable side dish of kimchi. Deliciously spicy and meant to go with any proper dish, you will soon find great pleasure in eating your rice and kimchi with chopsticks, like you are supposed to. I am like Brandon Sanderson in that I also am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. And, no, Joel Saxon, the wonderful aroma of kimchi was not our chief military weapon that allowed us to overrun your ancestor's homelands. It was the great and powerful might of our great ancestors and noble Kings (that were fed on the power of kimchi since their earliest youth) that utterly overwhelmed your uncivilized nations. One day, our glorious armadas of turtle ships will sail into the American Isles and bring the entire world under the united banner of the great JoSeun empire! Join us now and we will kneel on the floor and eat like civilized humans together. But before I go, would any of you like some kimchi to go with that? It goes quite well on any dinner table with every dish.