Why Silver AND Salt?

[+Oltux72]

On 18.3.2022 at 5:29 PM, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I don't think the "salt" it mentions is table salt, sodium chloride, as we think of it. The book mentions the salt rocks being *black* if i remember correctly. So here's my proposition:

Then where do they get their salt from? They cannot make it from the oceans. And it must be conventional salt. Silver chloride does not dissolve in water. There are silver salts that do, but those are poisonous. Sodium chloride must be poisonous to spores and they put high amounts into their sustenance.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

On 3/13/2022 at 7:17 AM, Nameless said:

Why do you think the evil hadn’t arrived during the time of SH?

We do know they didn't flee until past Secret History (Shadows for Silence is between Warbreaker and Stormlight, so probably over 200 years past SH, and Silence's grandparents were among the very first to explore the new continent so they fled probably within a century or two of the story), but it's unclear if the Evil existed prior (and just wasn't bad enough to warrant evacuating a whole continent) or not.

[+Oltux72]

5 minutes ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

We do know they didn't flee until past Secret History (Shadows for Silence is between Warbreaker and Stormlight, so probably over 200 years past SH, and Silence's grandparents were among the very first to explore the new continent so they fled probably within a century or two of the story), but it's unclear if the Evil existed prior (and just wasn't bad enough to warrant evacuating a whole continent) or not.

Theoretically true, yet that scenario has problem of its own. How do you explain that neither Nazriloff nor Khrissalla know what the Evil is? That very much suggests that the arrival and the rise of the Evil occured together, quickly and suddenly.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

10 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Theoretically true, yet that scenario has problem of its own. How do you explain that neither Nazriloff nor Khrissalla know what the Evil is? That very much suggests that the arrival and the rise of the Evil occured together, quickly and suddenly.

I do agree that that is most likely (or at the very least that it arose after Nazh left and during a time where very few people came or left), just wanted to clarify that we don't have confirmation of it like we do the timeline of them abandoning the Homeland.

[cometaryorbit]

40 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Theoretically true, yet that scenario has problem of its own. How do you explain that neither Nazriloff nor Khrissalla know what the Evil is? That very much suggests that the arrival and the rise of the Evil occured together, quickly and suddenly.

I agree that the Evil (in its current form) must have arisen after Nazh left Threnody.

It could have existed before in some other, much less dangerous form, but only if that form was different enough that Nazh wouldn't recognize the current Evil as the same thing (or if the previous form was so localized that Nazh never heard of it, I guess).

[Lego Mistborn]

On 3/18/2022 at 0:29 PM, Stormtide_Leviathan said:

I don't think the "salt" it mentions is table salt, sodium chloride, as we think of it. The book mentions the salt rocks being *black* if i remember correctly. So here's my proposition:

 

 

On 3/20/2022 at 3:00 AM, Oltux72 said:

Then where do they get their salt from? They cannot make it from the oceans. And it must be conventional salt. Silver chloride does not dissolve in water. There are silver salts that do, but those are poisonous. Sodium chloride must be poisonous to spores and they put high amounts into their sustenance.

Perhaps the salt is another silver salt that isn't poisonous to humans(or at least Lumarians) which explains why both silver and salt kill the spores.

[+Oltux72]

3 hours ago, Ta'veren Kaladin said:

 

Perhaps the salt is another silver salt that isn't poisonous to humans(or at least Lumarians) which explains why both silver and salt kill the spores.

1. Silver salts are poisonous to anything alive on our Earth (Humans can stand comparatively much silver. That's the reason silver cutlery is hygenic and possible.)
2. Your food is somewhat salty. It has to be on average, or you will die from ionic imbalance. The chloride in that would combine with the silver to an insoluble sludge.

3. The insides of your mouth and your hands and any body part you wash with water contaminated with silver salts would be covered with a practically unremovable film of black, finely dispersed metallic silver.

4. They would still need ordinary salt to preserve stuff and for seasoning.

5. On Threnody it takes metallic silver.

 

So I am afraid on the whole there are a lot of reasons that their salt is just sodium chloride and The Rock's rock is soft chert or a black mudstone. The salt cannot be on the surface. It would remove the need for mines and would wash away in the rain. They are just too inconsiderate and stingy to remove the last traces of a material that will get into their food from the environment anyway.