ShardplateJoe III

Hey y'all I'm just curious about something. During Oathbringer and Rhythm of War it is suggested heavily if not outright stated that the powers of the Bondsmiths are over powered to the point where Dalinar, by virtue of being bondsmith (correct me if I'm wrong) can speak on behalf of Honor. In Oathbringer we also learn that the surge of adhesion works for Bondsmiths in a more spiritual way than it does for the Windrunners, which allows them to forge spiritual connections in ways that the books have not made extremely clear yet. What I'm wondering is why this OP powerset is given to the Bondsmiths and not the Windrunners, who are bonded to honorspren (the spren closest in intent to Honor himself), and who use the surges of both adhesion and gravitation, which are both binding in nature. In contrast, the Bondsmiths can be bound to either the Stormfather (Honor's spren), the Nightwatcher (Cultivation's Spren), and the Sibling (Honor and Cultivation's child) and use the surges of adhesion and tension (which alters the stiffness of an object). In the case of the Stormfather it makes sense, but why would the Nightwatcher's Bondmsith be able to use Adhesion to such overpowered extremes? It seems to me that if any order of KR should be overpowered, it should be the Windrunners who seem the most related to Honor. Do we know of any in world explanations for this? The meta explanation is possibly that Brandon didn't want to give the largest order of KR the overpowered ability to bind planets as they saw fit, but are there in world explanations for this? Thank you.

Pretty sure this isn't a repost

Thank you! For sure, in fact there is an argument to be made that against another user of gravitation, lashed projectiles would be completely useless without extreme levels of tact, the reason being that they would now be accelerating at the same rate as your opponent (off the top of my head, we do see the Skybreakers practicing with lashed projectiles, but they do have to be clever about how they use them) so unless you lash the projectile several times over, and it is designed to minimize drag, you are almost never going to hit an opponent in a meaningful way with your projectiles. In fact, the more surface area an object has compared to its volume, the smaller its ability to accelerate due to gravity is, and the lower its terminal velocity, which is why you can drop a bug from a weather balloon and it will survive, but do the same with an elephant and things will get messy. If I'm thinking about this correct, a Windrunner using two lashings to outrun a projectile thrown with two lashings will almost always outrun said projectile, unless the projectile was designed to minimize drag, due to the fact that the windrunner will have a greater mass to surface area ratio than the projectile was. However, against ground troops, a gravitation user would be devastating. Edit: I just thought of a a few uses where if a gravitation user was being pursued, they could lash a projectile backwards. That would be a good situational use of a projectile.

Hey y'all, your friendly neighborhood physics student here. I saw this discussion and found it interesting, so I created these graphics here that show us what the kinetic energy and momenta of several boulders on Roshar would look like (also calculated their terminal velocity on Roshar). Below are the momenta and kinetic energies of three hypothetical spherical granite boulders. The difference between the kinetic energy of an object and the momentum of an object is subtle, but energy is the ability to do work, while momentum is the mass of the object multiplied by the velocity of the object, while kinetic energy is one half of the mass multiplied by the velocity squared, which is why a bullet and a fast baseball may have the same momentum, but the bullet has much more kinetic energy, making getting hit by a bullet objectively worse. One of the biggest trebuchets in the world could launch a 150 kg projectile at 70 meters per second (source). That is a kinetic energy of 3.67 * 10^5 Joules, with a momentum of 10^4 kg m/s. The smallest of our hypothetical boulders has 6.5 * 10^6 Joules at terminal velocity, while the biggest has 1.67 * 10^9 Joules. So, the smallest of our boulders has about 20 times the kinetic energy of one of the largest medieval siege engines in the world, while the biggest has four orders of magnitude more kinetic energy than the same siege engine, and this is using one lashing on unengineered boulders. It is not unreasonable to say that Windrunners and others who can use gravitation are among the most powerful siege engines ever seen, especially since you consider the fact that its not like there is a shortage of stone on Roshar, especially if you have access to either a shardblade or a soulcaster, which our characters have ample access to. Sorry for how big the graphics are, but here are some quick thoughts I had, and I better get back to my homework.

It seems to me that the Stormfather could actually be categorized as a spren similar to the Unmade. The Stormfather asserts that before Tanavast's death that he was more of a storm-- less cognizant-- and that when Tanavast died, his cognitive shadow fused with the Stormfather, permanently changing him. I'm not saying that the Stormfather is an Unmade, but that something similar happened to him as what happened to the Unmade.

While I would love to see Kaladin swear the fifth ideal, the possibility remains that he will not. Many orders considered knights of the third and fourth ideals as full radiants, and it was more of an exception rather than the rule that one had to swear the fifth ideal, if our experience with the Skybreakers can be taken as representative of every order (which it may or may not be, but in this particular case, it seems reasonable that it is). The fact that Kaladin's scars have healed was a culmination of much of Kaladin's progression, which was tied to Kaladin accepting the idea of the fourth ideal. If Kaladin never swears the fifth ideal, I would be okay with that, as we still got to Kaladin heal mentally and physically from those scars (I know he still has a lot of mental health problems, but stormlight heals one according to how they view themselves). I don't know if there is much reason now for Kaladin to swear the fifth ideal beyond satisfying our curiosity regarding what cool new powers he'll have. What are your thoughts?

Hey y'all! So I was recently thinking about how Nale killed a few radiants using Nightblood. Now, we know that Nightblood consumes investiture indiscriminately, so I was curious about the effect that Nightblood would have on the spren of a radiant that it killed. We see from Nightblood that when he even pricks a person, that is enough to allow him to consume the investiture that is that person entirely, we also know that the Nahel bond is very intimate, the spren and human that are bonded have their spirits intimately tied together, so I am wondering if Nightblood has an affect on the spren themselves as well. Are there any WOB's on this?

I like the idea of Whimsy being the Sheogorath of the Cosmere, though I agree that Whimsy connotes more of a positive, innocent, and fanciful feeling than a madgod archetype. I'm picturing Sheogorath, but with less of his dark side in him.

At this point, I don't think we have time to see Kal in a relationship. We have ten days until the duel of the champions, little time for a serious relationship to grow, and if the duel of the champions happens at the climax of the book (which it almost certainly will, though I may be surprised) we have fifteen years between the events of SA 5 and 6. Assuming Kal survives SA 5, we will have fast forwarded Kal's life fifteen years, at which point he will probably have been married for about a decade ish.

I think another important detail that is being missed is that Wit was truly scared when he raised that Todium was messing with his Breaths. I don't think that Hoid came out on top in this situation, and he won't know something is wrong for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised if Wit had a way to store his memories in a failsafe off world or something, but for the time being something terrible has happened, and Wit has finally been bested.

I'm of the mindset that Kaladin's fourth ideal will be along the lines of taking care of himself, my thinking being that there is only so much one can do for others without taking care of themselves before they just collapse, and that is what we see from Kaladin at the beginning of Oathbringer, is that he is having a hard time protecting others because of his own mental scars. Edit: But I do believe that Kaladin's path to the 4th ideal will depend on his time with Lirin in book 4.

I saw somewhere else on the shard that Brandon has confirmed that Rysn has enough investiture to effectively reach the fifth heightening now, which is hinted at with her increased sensitivity to colors, tastes, pitches, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if she does become immortal because she is now heavily invested. Edit: IIRC, she also manifested lifesense, which is a trait of the fourth heightening, which probably suggests that the abilities gained by awakeners through reaching the other heightenings are not unique to Breaths, but rather any individual invested enough will manifest these same passive abilities.

Okay, I really should be doing my homework, but I just finished Dawnshard, boi oh boi, was it a good time. Anyway, I am a physics student, and have been thinking quite a bit about what Nikli said during the deal with Rysn. He said, "The most powerful forms of Surgebinding transcend traditional mortal understanding... All their greatest applications require Intent and Command. Demands on a level no person could ever manage alone. To make such Commands, one must have the reasoning--the breadth of understanding-- of a deity. And so, the Dawnshards. The four primal Commands that created all things" (pg189,190). He goes on to say that the Commands were used to undo Adonalsium, but what I am interested in is his what he said about the four primal commands. I've seen a lot already of people talking about how these relate to the Intents of the shards, but I have not yet seen how anyone has talked about how these may relate to the four fundamental interactions we know and love as the Strong nuclear force Holds together atomic nuclei Weak nuclear force Is responsible for radioactive decay Gravity The curvature of spacetime due to mass/energy Electromagnetism Responsible for much more than you might think, like light and chemistry The reason I connect these to the four commands is because Nikli implies that the Dawnshards allow one to surgebind at the most primal level. We already understand that surgebinding is the ability to manipulate one of the ten surges or what Rosharans perceive as the ten fundamental forces of physics. Basically, the reason there are ten surges is because everyone kind of agrees that it looks like there are ten, though there are actually only four interactions. These four fundamental interactions govern how literally everything in the universe is structured, behaves, etc. Thus, the dawnshards are the ultimate surgebinding tool that allow one to plug their will (Intent) directly into one of the four fundamental interactions (Commands) of the universe. There probably is some sort of relation to the Shards and their Intents, but I think the Dawnshards are primarily a god tier tool that allow people to directly influence the world without going through a Shard. What are your thoughts?