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SnopyDogy

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  1. Wow, that must have taken some effort. I really enjoy this sort of speculation on Brandon's wonderful; world building . A few things i'd like to point out: I seem to recall a thread from a couple of years ago were there was a general agreement that the size of the Roshar super continent was about the same as Eurasia or 10,000km across (a resent reddit thread using OB info puts it about 7,500km across including aimia). I did some rough math with that in mind and it turns out that the OB hardcover jacket map has a scale of about 220-280km per centimetre. That makes some of your small passes 100-300km across . More defensible than 1000+km but still not small, even for nations that can field armies of 100,000+ men. You forgot about soulcasters. i suspect that the ability to soulcast food changes its geo-political importance somewhat. Another possibility for Thaylenah is to colonise the Frostlands, i suspect they are underpopulated. Trade with the Reshi isles could be very profitable, in the same way trade with Indonesia was very profitable in our world for a while (gotta get those spices for the men's food from somewhere right?). I'm not sure you can describe Azir as a desert. A desert implies low rainfall, less than 250mm according to Wikipedia. A typical highstorm must deliver at least 50mm every time it comes through. As we know Shinovar is the only place that doesn't see the highstorms and it isn't a desert. I think it is fair to say that there are no deserts on Roshar, at least as we define them on earth. Highstorms also make availability of fresh water a non-issues for anyone with the basic infrastructure (roof + water tank) to collect rainfall. I imagine Azir being sort of like the Holy Roman Empire, everyone like to pretend it is one sate when it is convenient while acting like a bunch or separate states when it isn't. Azir does seem to lean more towards the unified state end of the spectrum tho. Okay so that was more than a few points. Do any of these change your model?
  2. Glass is very important. It's one of the reasons Europe got ahead of China. Clears glass in particular is important. Without it you don't have telescopes (they have spyglasses) or microscopes/magnifying glass (can't remember if we have seen one, but they likely do). Not to mention inert sadly worked glass without which any complex chemistry is basically impossible. Speaking of chemistry, didn't Shallan mention it as one of the sciences in her first meeting with Jasnah in WoK?
  3. I think you guys are over complicating this, the answer is simple: Syl just like showing off.
  4. I think syl's intuitive understanding of lies is improving as Kaladin says more oaths. If he had said this during the WoK than she would probably have complained about the lie. By this time she is able to correctly interpret kaladin's response as "haven't I apologised enough" (it's more hyperbole than lie really). This would explain her playfull response. Hell it wouldn't surprise me if syl was looking for another apology and set him up for it. She is pretty narcissistic, in a playfull, I know it and I don't care sort of way.
  5. I've been thinking of spren in terms of (my limited understanding of) quantum mechanics myself lately. I have a theory that all spren start of in a base, stable state I.e a shard of investiture. When it interacts with some intent (or thought) it become exited and changes into a different state, this state is the spren. I conceptualise this as being like the energy states of an electron around an atom. Just like an electron will drop down ito a more stable/lower energy state I also believe that a spren will, in the absence of additional intent, return to the base state it started as (which I suspect is what the spren think of as death). This would mean that most spren are unstable unless they have a supply of intent, provided by living things in the physical realm, to keep them stable. This would explain why spren seem to follow the thin they "represent" around, it's a matter of survival. Actually I wonder if spren have a half-life, like unstable elements. Would a population of windspren deplete by half after, say, 30 days if deprived of intent? what do you guys think?
  6. I'd recommend that you skip ahead and read all the interludes, especially the one with Lift in it. If you want to avoid spoilers then skip the interludes featuring Sezth.
  7. I think there is a more mundane explanation for why surge binders tend to gather, it goes like this: Someone with power, magical, political or otherwise, will either by choice or not get involved in important events. If the number of surgebinders is greater than the number of important events them it is inevitable that surgebinders will meet, and given there shared philosophy will form groups. if we look at this by looking at lift you can see how it works: -- Lifts power makes her a better theif so she gets recruited by a group of thieves for a big. -- her power help her perform a "miracle" in front of other people with power cause a new emperor to be crowned. -- her power causes her to come into conflict with darkness. -- finally her conflict with darkness brings her together with another surgebinder. basically my point is this would have happened even without the world being invested to the hilt.
  8. Why settle for a three hour move? Why not go for the 5 hour epic with an intermission? With 5 hours you could fit in a lot more story.
  9. I like them both. i was a little worried people wouldn't get what i was drive at, i'm relived someone got it. If it were me i'd have a second team produce/film the interludes then release them one by one to fill in the gaps between main seasons. Ideally you wouldn't stop producing new episodes, i.e. even as the first season is released you are filing the second. there would be a gap between season while you build up the episodes to have the full part but you could use the interludes to fill this gap in and build up the world. almost the opposite of how Brandon used them. Brandon used them to break up the monolithic book, a TV series could use them to keep interest up between the main seasons.
  10. Not Necessarily. I agree a movie wouldn't work, way too much story, way too little screen time. But a TV series could work, if your willing to drop everything that makes it suitable for TV. by that i mean abandon having episodes of a regular length designed to fit into a TV time slot (with Ads, can't forget the ads). Instead you make one episode per chapter and make it whatever length it needs to be to convey the story in that chapter. Some episodes would be only a couple of minutes long, others half an hour or more. A season would correspond to a part and would be released all at once to service like Netflix. Doing it like this would give the creators a lot of flexibility. Lots of short episodes don't matter too much because people will binge watch the whole season anyway. likewise you could pack a lot into the screen time, e.g. have things going on in the background that people can pickup on a re-watch (if it took us multiple re-reads to get everything then i don't see why it won't work for viewers). I think a format like this could work. There are already people doing stuff like this (in format, not content) on YouTube where that make episodes 5-20 minutes long depending on the need (or constraints). As for weather it should be some sort of animation or live action... well as much as i love Anime i must admit i have never really imagined it as anime in my head, i just can't visualise it. I fear for the spren in a live action tho, i mean i could just see most of them never being shown which is just sad , Syl would have no one to play with . Speaking of Anime i feel obliged to defend the medium (feel free to skip as its off topic... i wont be offended ). Most Anime you'll see on TV in the west is Shonen, which is pretty much a genre in its own right. The Japanese can make anything Shonen, including Cooking! Its the Japanese version of the western Super Hero Comics and has it own tropes etc. It is characteristically over the top and exaggerated. To make matters worst the compinies that import and dub it often remove alot of the fan service (aka nudity) and more graphic violence. in addition they often change the script to target a younger audience. Its not uncommon for a series target audience to lose 5 years in translation (which is, imo, a pity as often the whole message/point of the show is lost as well). For adults this really isn't the ideal introduction to Anime. Other genres aren't anywhere near as bad. most of the ones that are do it for a reason. Often over the top animation or a less real style is used for comedy, in much the same away a laugh track is used by western sitcoms (seriously watch one without the laugh track, it doesn't work nearly as well). Skip Beat is a very clear example of this, that show has multiple genre disorder . The less serious/over the top art style is used to signal when it is in its comedy genre, the more serious used to signal when its in Drama mode. Full metal Panic is a more subtly example, when it gets over the top it is usually because that scene is part of the rom-com between the two main characters, the rest of the time it is a very serious sci-fi/war story. In short the over the top parts are generally used as a visual signal of a change in tone in the story telling. Some Anime don't use it at all tho, ghost in the shell comes to mind. Personally if Stormlight Archive was done in an Anime style id expect the over the top parts to be kept to a minimum and preferably be non-existent.
  11. I don't believe that Shard blades themselves have and "bonus" vs shardplate due to investiture or anything like that. Instead, iirc every time we see blades doing significant damage to plate (more then we see mundane weapons doing) the wielder of the bald is wearing plate. So it is the attackers shardplate that is really doing the damage by allowing him to put a lot more force behind the blow then someone without shardplate would ever manage. The one advantage shardbaldes have (and the reason why someone in plate would prefer it) is that no matter what you do to the blade it will not give or break, unlike mundane weapons. However this advantage is offset by the fact that the blade is a woeful weapon for dealing with plate armor, it just isn't designed for it. Given that shard plate has no gaps a fine piercing point on the blade would be no use (and no of the illustrations show) it is clear that shard blades were not designed to fight people in shard plate. What it is designed for is long sweeping cuts, taking advantage of the fact that it can cut through pretty much anything. i.e. it is a weapon optimized to fight people without plate that gets used against plat when required. Plate armor, and sharplate would be no different, is optimized to turn and deflect bladed weapons. I suspect that someone without plate using a shard bald would have difficulty damaging the plate itself as many of his blows would simple be deflected away from the plate, meaning that very little force is actually transfer to the plate. This also makes the one definite advance of the blade (i.e. its indestructability) irrelevant. Now the mundane War hammer/Mace is designed very specifically to fight someone in armor, especially plate. It delivers a large amount of "blunt" force to a small surface area using a form which minimize the chance of deflection. Against mundane plate armor the idea is that the blow would still hurt the person in armor, perhaps bruising or breaking bones. Against Shardplate which doesn't allow much if any force through to the wearer all the force imparted by these weapons would be transferred to the plate, causing more damage and encouraging failure. The only question is if the weapon can outlast the shardplate. I suspect that it will. TL;DR I believe that the optimal design of the war hammer will, in the hands of an unassisted wielder, prove the better weapon for cracking open plate.
  12. There is a difference between telling the future (prophecy) and just knowing the probability of different outcomes. The first is stating something that hasn't happened yet as if it was a fact without any proof to substation the claim. If a supernatural source was claimed then this would defiantly be prophecy. an example might be saying "I'll roll a six" before rolling a die. The second is simply stating how likely a particular outcome of an action is. it makes no definitive prediction about the future. An example might be to say "there is a 12/5% chance i'll role a six". Whats more you can prove you're statement using math. This is what the stormwardens are doing when predicting the weather. They probably say there is a 88% change of a highstorm between 8 and 9pm tonight. they can show the math they use to determine this. The result is that the ardents (who are educated) agree that this isn't prophecy, but math instead. Also i suspect that the math for predicting high storms was developed in the east where vorinism prohibitions on prophecy probably don't mean much. It also wouldn't be prophecy if you were doing a thought experiment. There is no future to predict in a thought experiment. And statistics are just as important for working out things about the present or past as they are about the future. For example working out the current population of the parshindi using statistics, past knowledge of raids and army strength would have nothing to do with the future. The same would be true of a shop keeper trying to work out how much new product to order using statics on past sales, no future involved. In fact thinking about it the vorin doctrin against prophecy might have forced the development of cretin math in an attempt to get around the prophecy stigma, after all math is logically and provably not prophecy. tl;dr Statics and probability don't necessarily conflict with vorinism and where they do (or are seen to) they can still be developed in the vorin free east, moving west when they have firmly established themselves as a science.
  13. In regards to mathematics there is this: I doubt the Alethi were able to conduct a census of the Parshendi population before going to war. So they must be using some mathematical method to estimate their numbers. Iirc this estimate was fairly accurate, so either they were lucky or they have some reasonably good statical methods. This reminds me a little of how the allies in WW2 would estimate the number of German tanks based on the non-sequential serial numbers of captured examples. Also Storm Wardens predict highstorm occurrences and even what weather/season will occur between highstorms using mathematics. I belie it takes some fairly fancy math to predict the weather. Another thing to consider is this: If scholars see physics as a separate discipline then it implies that understanding of it is reasonably advanced. Which could imply that calculus has been developed (Newton developed his calculus to help advance his physics theories). bit of a stretch but still. Also the above quote came from Shallan's interview with Jasnah to be her ward. It was a direct response to a question about Logic and math.
  14. This is basically my argument. The rate of change, of innovation, in most of the times you are talking about was still very slow. it was there, innovation has always been there, but it was slow. as you point out the more of the citizenry which had free time to innovate the more innovations there were. what made the Industrial Revolution different from the times you mention is that the number of those innovates was higher then it had ever been before (that is what made the 80/20 ration so magic, and for the record that ratio is now better then 10/90, complete reversed from where it has been for 99% of human agricultural history). What i was trying to say is that there appears t be a rapid increase in the rate of innovation in Alethi society, and I'd like to know how big this increase is as it would help us determine how close they are to an industrialised society. There are several times in human history where we see a big improvement in the rate of innovation. 1) the start of agriculture, which for the first time allowed some people to think about more then where the next meal was coming from. 2) the widespread use of the printing press, which help spread information 3) the beginning of the industrial revolution, 4) the information revolution (internet). you'll notice that these are getting closer and closer together. So what i think (ymmv) is that this rate of innovation we are seeing is less medieval and more renascence or near-industrial. also most of the benefits of the early industrial revolution took decades to filter down from the rich to the poor. Actually in some ways i agree with your point that they seem to be creating toys for the rich, more so then was the case in the early industrial revolution. However the desolation will probably change that. in a total war setting (which I believe a desolation is) the entire economy goes into fighting the war. no one is going to have the time or resources to spare in that case to build a heating fabrial for some rich lord. however they might build them if troops are freezing to death and they are running out of wood. So a desolation would distort the priorities of the economy and may force an industrial revolution earlier then we might have otherwise expected. This is what I believe. Mind you I'm not as sold on my own argument as I appear... anyone got a knife I could borrow?
  15. Most sieges in the middle ages (where the attackers won) were resolved by starving out the besieged. As you have both pointed out I suspect this is impractical on Roshar. Actually storming a fortified town wasn't popular until canons came along and allowed attackers to effectively breach walls in relatively short periods of time (weeks instead of months or years). On Roshar most sieges would have been resolved by an assault on the walls with siege towers (explains the design of Dalinar's bridges), rams and ladders. I suspect this one of those arias where having a shard bearer would help as they would make a great forlorn hope. Interestingly the same argument applies to muskets. I think some people are getting siege weapons confused with field artillery. The Roman Scorpio is a good example of field artillery and the howitzer is the dominant form today. Canons were defiantly field artillery, especially the lighter canon. the job of field artillery was to kill men, best example of this is WW1 where field artillery killed millions. A good example of siege weapons would be battering rams or seige towers, or even the humble ladder. all of these are designed to breach or bypass fortifications like walls. Heaver canons would defiantly used in this role, in fact the very heavy 24 pounder guns were exclusive used in this role being too big and heavy to be effective field artillery.
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