Invocation

My first post on this site was questioning if Reckoners was cosmere. There is nowhere lower I can go than that. I have no shame left.

Wait you said nothing too overkill. Disregard the last half of that, could probably stop at the sandpaper room.

As he was hurtling through the air, still reeling from the actual delineation of the world around him, he realized two things: the first was the most disorienting (apparently his sight wasn't entirely forward facing only) and the second, which brought the first to his attention was that there was another very human-shaped figure that appeared to be directly in his path. He didn't know how to change that path, and since he'd dropped his cane in the initial takeoff, he couldn't even poke at them and try to move one of the two of them out of the way. But he also became aware of something else, another thing inside of him: something that seemed to whisper at him that it could help him with the impact, so he nudged it in the same way he had the other, its heat joining the fire inside him, making him feel, stronger, in some odd way, and braced himself for impact.

@Channelknight Fadran

Giant...crustaceans. Alright.That was new. Jon poked gently at the odd pie-shaped thing that showed up in his mind's eye (that also was new) and something happened. The world, at least he assumed it was the world, expanded out in front of him in blue lines that traced their way back to his chest. The warmth of...whatever this was...was comforting, given the strangeness of the situation. He focused on one, one of the myriad strands pointing toward the shambling mass of chitin that he could actually see now, and something else happened. He flew backwards. This may have been a mistake.

"Jon. You?"

She wants nothing more than for Elend to make his burgeoning nation autonomous from what came before, and keep it that way in face of the advancing armies, and while she doesn't want to go offer the same advice to the leaders of the advancing war-states, she feels drawn to do so in exactly the same way a Shard has to carry out its Intent. Her particular mutation of Autonomy could be something like Autonomy-in-the-face-of-Adversity, leading to this exact thing. For the next person: Vivenna-as-Azure isn't actually the Vivenna from Warbreaker.

Something felt...different. This air was not what Jon was used to. It felt...wetter. The sounds were different, too. Gone were the ambient road-noises, gone were the sounds of construction from the apartment building being constructed next door. He turned, well aware of how futile that was for a blind person, but he turned anyway. What had happened? He was walking...going to get a bagel before heading home...and then his ears popped and everything was different. Even the sound of his footsteps sounded different - harder, like he'd stepped onto a shale field. Voices. "Hello?" He called, doing his best to face the direction it sounded like the voices were coming from. "This...isn't some part of Nashville I've never been to before, is it?"

Depends on how true to reality you're trying to be. We didn't even know about the dandelion thing until WW2 or so. But if it's fantasy stuff, sure, go wild. If rubber doesn't rub on other rubber or anything particularly abrasive you should be fine. Maybe have it be wrapped in cloth or something, that could work.

Ah yes, my niche knowledge will come in handy! I had to do a project on rubber trees a while back. Early rubber mostly comes from the varieties of rubber tree: Amazonian rubber trees are the most common because they respond well to cultivation, and was used in early Mesoamerican societies to make rubber. They need lots of rain and no frost, because frost ruins the rubber. It takes 7-10 years before the first harvest can be made, and after 30 years, they tend to be cut down due to a significant drop in latex production volume. You tap the tree, the sap comes out, when it stops flowing, you take the bucket and fill molds with it, then the sap hardens and boom - rubber in whatever shape the mold was. Then move the tap and do it again. Actual production varies strongly from tree to tree and subvariety to subvariety. There's a real world blight that could be devastating to this species of rubber tree. Congo rubber comes from a bush (that grows as a vine around other trees) that get used to make rubber. They grow in tropical places, notably Africa irl, if you couldn't tell from the name Congo rubber. They give fruit, so that's neat. The most common way this was collected was to slit the vine and let it flow all over your hand and arm, where it hardens slightly, until the flow stops, then make another slit in another part of the plant and repeat. After a few layers, you can peel it off and then it works well as a medicine against worms when consumed. Dandelions produce a similar thing to the Amazonian rubber trees, but much much more varied in latex quality and amount, which trends toward being low enough to be unfeasible. Amazonian rubber was the main one used early on, because quite frankly it's the best of the three. Olmec ruins have the earliest evidence of its use, but Aztec and Mayan ruins also display some signs of use, likely from knowledge passed down for the duration of those civilizations' existences, but that's off-topic. The most common use that has evidence remaining is soaking water containers in the liquid sap before it had been formed into molds to make the container waterproof, when they weren't just making the containers out of rubber directly. For their game thing, the balls were normally made of rubber too, like a much more violent use for a kickball. Congo rubber was and is used for medicine, working fairly effectively, but also was used for poisoning arrows, luring small animals and birds into traps for food, and the fruit that grows on the vines is both edible and fermentable into an alcohol. Manpower isn't that intensive, the molds can be left alone once filled until they're of the right consistency (overnight tends to work, but it depends on humidity). Clothes is a bad idea. Rubber rubbing against itself makes a horrible smell, and also tends to make anything that might be good about it go away, but most other things are just a matter of making the mold and letting it sit. Natural rubber like that is a renewable resource, since it's trees, but you have to be careful to stagger planting, because there's only about 25 years on average of actual production, not including the 7-10 on the front end that I mentioned earlier for it to actually start producing. A massive gap like that between harvests wouldn't be a good thing for a rubber-reliant income.

Welcome to the Shard! What's your favorite character growth moment?

I hear good things about the Magnus Archives podcast, but I've only just started listening myself. Wolf-359 is more sci-fi, but it's good, and I can vouch for that one all the way through, having kept up with it for all 60-something episodes. Also, I'm not sure about narration, but the Mage Errant books are interesting, the Iron Druid chronicles are decently entertaining, if a little internally inconsistent, and the Aliomenti Saga by Alex Albrinck is alright. Will Wight's other two series, Traveller's Gate and Elder Empire, are also both supposed to be very well narrated, being done by the same person/people as Cradle.

How do you feel about podcasts? If that's a no-go for you (understandable, good podcasts can be hard to find), Cradle by Will Wight is supposed to have good narration.

Lift...bonding Kell. Not because it's a particularly good fit or anything...I just think it'd be funny.