What are the Men of Gold and Red?

[alder24]

15 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

True, but there are about 16 thousand possible shard metals. The chance that none of them are radioactive is slim based purely on metallic categorizations. And I meant a similar property of investiture -> energy because of it's already destructive nature like harmonium.

Let me repeat "as far as we know". We know 7 god metals, 8 if you count what Azure's blade is as one. And to be fair, any one of those metals can become radioactive if you give it more neutrons, so called neutron activation. You create an unstable isotope that after some time returns to a stable, non-radioactive form, via radiation.

And I disagree - radioactivity means the element is unstable and decays to a more stable form. If there is no stable form of such an element, like Uranium, all of it will eventually decay away to smaller elements, and there would be no Uranium left in the Universe (long long long time - the half-life for U238 is 4.5 billion years.). If that's the case with one of the god metals, then what happens to the investiture in that metal when it turns from "shardium15th" to another element with 1 or 2 protons less, like e.g. into iron? Because god metals are physical manifestations of the Shards, and Shards are not decaying away, nor their investiture is, why would god metals be radioactive without stable isotope?

[Ashbringer he/him]

God Metals won't melt or otherwise change phase. I'm pretty sure expecting the normal laws of material physics to apply to them is presumptuous. 

Though a radioactive god metal would be cool. And could probably leak both energy or Investiture, which would have interesting applications.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

20 hours ago, alder24 said:

Let me repeat "as far as we know". We know 7 god metals, 8 if you count what Azure's blade is as one. And to be fair, any one of those metals can become radioactive if you give it more neutrons, so called neutron activation. You create an unstable isotope that after some time returns to a stable, non-radioactive form, via radiation.

And I disagree - radioactivity means the element is unstable and decays to a more stable form. If there is no stable form of such an element, like Uranium, all of it will eventually decay away to smaller elements, and there would be no Uranium left in the Universe (long long long time - the half-life for U238 is 4.5 billion years.). If that's the case with one of the god metals, then what happens to the investiture in that metal when it turns from "shardium15th" to another element with 1 or 2 protons less, like e.g. into iron? Because god metals are physical manifestations of the Shards, and Shards are not decaying away, nor their investiture is, why would god metals be radioactive without stable isotope?

Let me repeat "True." If it is radioactive to "regular" elements, it simply means the investiture stored/allocated to such a shardmetal is released (similar to if it were burned). I also don't know that adding matter to a shardmetal would cause radioactivity, since a shardmetal is simple any material supercharged with investiture - so if you add enough matter, it should simply disperse the investiture returning the metal to it's original state. (This is why some believe shaod/pre-raod elantrians are made of the dor's shardmetal.) Adding matter should be difficult, considering alloys aren't enough to disperse it, so it might have to be atomically.

17 hours ago, Ashbringer said:

God Metals won't melt or otherwise change phase. I'm pretty sure expecting the normal laws of material physics to apply to them is presumptuous. 

Though a radioactive god metal would be cool. And could probably leak both energy or Investiture, which would have interesting applications.

The AoL era melting processes aren't nearly as hot as what we often use today. It isn't possible back then, but someone calculated based on the description that harmonium should be able to be meltd at sub-modern temperatures. I don't remember the thread that this was brought up in, though. It might also just leak investiture. 

[gremlin303]

This thread seems to have derailed a bit, but back to the original topic, what are people’s thoughts on potential similarities between the Sorceress’ awakened metal soldiers and Autonomy’s troops? 

[shivna]

On 2/3/2023 at 1:11 PM, Brgst13 said:

On 12/11/2022 at 4:39 AM, killersquirrel59 said:

My pet theory was that it represents an alliance of Autonomy and Odium, Autonomy being red as reflected in the red flakes on Trellium (Bavadinium), the red eyes of the corrupted kandra, and the red glow of her Shard form when Sazed showed Wax the vision, and Odium being gold as reflected in his appearance as a gold-skinned singer, the golden appearance of Raysium, and his light being described as golden when he appeared in Shard form. But given what happened to Odium in Stormlight 4 that would have to assume that the colour-coding was somehow intrinsic to the shard rather than a preference of the holder and that seems very odd to me. 

I agree with this. Men of gold and red. Odium’s light was gold and red the second to last time he appeared to Teravangean. 

Are these Fused/ Regals? Even if Dahlinar won his contest after RoW, Odium would still be allowed to send his agents across the cosmere per the terms of the agreement.

We even saw something (a spren of Odium?) posses the homeless person who talked to Suit before detonating the bomb.

(Sorry for the spelling. Audible listener here)

[AquaRegia he/him]

Tress' fancy Inspector coat is... *cue dramatic music*  ... RED AND GOLD.

Clearly Lumar Royal Inspectors are also agents of the unholy Odium/Autonomy alliance.

[Koloss17 She/They]

You know, the fact that Autonomy’s soldiers are on Lumar gives me even more ammunition for my theory that the Aethers are currently under Autonomy’s control.

[Weaver of Shadows he/him]

On 5/1/2023 at 10:10 AM, Koloss17 said:

You know, the fact that Autonomy’s soldiers are on Lumar gives me even more ammunition for my theory that the Aethers are currently under Autonomy’s control.

When does it say that Autonomy’s soldiers are on Lumar? I may have missed it but I don’t think it says anywhere that they are.

[Koloss17 She/They]

2 hours ago, Lightweaver2 said:

When does it say that Autonomy’s soldiers are on Lumar? I may have missed it but I don’t think it says anywhere that they are.

So the general idea is that Riino’s soldiers, with gold armor and red eyes, are the same as Trell’s soldiers of red and gold.

[Weaver of Shadows he/him]

20 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

So the general idea is that Riino’s soldiers, with gold armor and red eyes, are the same as Trell’s soldiers of red and gold.

Ok, thanks.

[Kaladin9]

Warbreaker chapter 3: "Servants approached carrying brilliant red and gold robes"

[Argenti he/him]

On 9/29/2023 at 5:11 AM, Kaladin9 said:

Warbreaker chapter 3: "Servants approached carrying brilliant red and gold robes"

It's highly unlikely they're lightsong's priests, theres nothing particularly special about them.

[alder24]

On 29.09.2023 at 11:11 AM, Kaladin9 said:

Warbreaker chapter 3: "Servants approached carrying brilliant red and gold robes"

Good catch. But gold and red coloration appears here and there in Cosmere, it might indicate some connection to Autonomy, or it's just an artistic choice. However Lightsong (his colors are red and gold) is very "autonomous" Returned, always doing the opposite of what's expected from him, so I bet Autonomy would appreciate him a lot. Maybe that's why his colors are red and gold? Brandon planned this all along!

[bmcclure7]

On 11/23/2022 at 4:18 PM, teknopathetic said:

Very likely, but no one in that series had Gold Skin. Granted, we didn't see much of the world, but the Iriali (or their long-trail workshopping offshoots) are still our closest phenotypical match. 

Iriali  Don't have red eyes. And they seem more robotic to me. I think they're human at all.  robots or cognitive  Shadows or more likely both. 

[Determination]

The way they're described in Tress (if Riina's soldiers are indeed the same thing as the "men of gold and red"), it seems highly likely they're Lifeless Knights Radiant, still wearing their Shardplate, which has been painted gold.

Quote

Eventually their little boat—a lone speck of color skimming the top of the void—navigated to shore. Here Tress could make out the legion of golden metal men standing in ranks around the Sorceress’s tower. Outfitted with spears and shields, Tress could almost imagine them as men in armor with lowered faceplates. If only they hadn’t stood so unnaturally still.

In particular the bit about looking like "men in armor with lowered faceplates" seems like a huge hint.

They're described as looking about 7 feet tall, and Rosharans are notoriously tall.

Quote

On the shore, the metal men marched in ranks, responding immediately to the Sorceress’s orders. The color of burnished brass, each one seven feet tall and carrying a spear with a glistening tip, they were an intimidating sight. Their instructions (carefully conveyed by the Sorceress when Breathing life into them) were complex, careful, and meticulous.

In fact pretty much everything about their portrayal in Tress is exactly how I'd expect a Lifeless wearing Shardplate to work out (i.e. fantasically well).

I don't have time right now to go digging in The Lost Metal for quotes but I don't think there's much in the way of description in there anyway. It's possible that they weren't Lifeless at that time --we know that story happens fairly soon after SA5, so depending on how exactly Dalinar's contest goes horribly wrong, they could be Fused Knights.

[alder24]

8 hours ago, Determination said:

The way they're described in Tress (if Riina's soldiers are indeed the same thing as the "men of gold and red"), it seems highly likely they're Lifeless Knights Radiant, still wearing their Shardplate, which has been painted gold.

In particular the bit about looking like "men in armor with lowered faceplates" seems like a huge hint.

They're described as looking about 7 feet tall, and Rosharans are notoriously tall.

In fact pretty much everything about their portrayal in Tress is exactly how I'd expect a Lifeless wearing Shardplate to work out (i.e. fantasically well).

I don't have time right now to go digging in The Lost Metal for quotes but I don't think there's much in the way of description in there anyway. It's possible that they weren't Lifeless at that time --we know that story happens fairly soon after SA5, so depending on how exactly Dalinar's contest goes horribly wrong, they could be Fused Knights.

No, that's not a Shardplate - Shardplates glow, those armors don't glow. It's a detail hard to miss when you see a Shardplate for the first time. Shardplates also give the strength of 10-20 men, they would rip those vines apart with no problem if that was a Shardplate. That armor is nothing like a Shardplate. 

Moreover, death breaks the Nahel Bond between the knight and the Radiant so Lifeless won't be able to have Shardplates or Shardblades on their own. Spren can decide to break the bond as well - they can't be forced to stay with someone they don't want to. Furthermore, Lifeless souls are replaced with Breaths - a fake soul with a different identity, so they normally can't use abilities they had while being alive. The original soul of either Radiants or Fused that gave them powers is gone, Breaths can't replace that. After death, it's just a normal dead corpse, it has no powers. Arsteel is an example of this. He was Returned before he died, as the Lifeless Clod he isn't like Returned, he can't do things Returned can - his Divine Breath left his body when he died. 

If they were wearing a dead Shardplate, that dead (or living) plate might interfere with their Awakening, just as dead plate prevents a Radiant from using their Surgebinding - it's not attuned to their Identity.

WoK ch 1 - description of a dead Shardplate:

Quote

Cenn turned, shocked out of his stupor. Galloping directly toward them was a massive black horse bearing a rider in gleaming armor that seemed to radiate light. That armor was seamless—no chain underneath, just smaller plates, incredibly intricate. The figure wore an unornamented full helm, and the plate was gilded. He carried a massive sword in one hand, fully as long as a man was tall. It wasn’t a simple, straight sword—it was curved, and the side that wasn’t sharp was ridged, like owing waves. Etchings covered its length.
It was beautiful. Like a work of art. Cenn had never seen a Shardbearer, but he knew immediately what this was. How could he ever have mistaken a simple armored lighteyes for one of these majestic creatures?

RoW ch 110 - living Shardplate description:

Quote

Lirin dangled from the gauntleted fist of a Shardbearer in resplendent Shardplate. Armor that seemed alive as it glowed a vibrant blue at the seams, Bridge Four glyphs emblazoned across the chest.

WoK prologue:

Quote

Szeth didn’t own a set of Plate himself, and didn’t care to. His Lashings interfered with the gemstones that powered Shardplate, and he had to choose one or the other

 

 

Spoiler

Oudeis16

If Bob the Awakener Awakened fifty straw men to dance around, then died, then Returned as FormerBob the Appropriately Named, would FormerBob be able to reclaim the Breath from the straw men in the normal fashion (once he learned the "Your Breath to Mine" Command)?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. He has enough of his original Identity, and the spiritual connection would remain.

sonofstannis

What if he instead were reincarnated as a lifeless? Is there a way he could reclaim it then?

Brandon Sanderson

Lifeless have someone else's investiture replacing their own. (As opposed to Returned, who are augmented.) Depends on how much of them is left, and if they can achieve sapience again, but I'd say this is unlikely.

WeiryWriter

What if the Lifeless is Awakened with their own Breath? (i.e. they gave it away right before they died and the person they gave it to then used it in the Awakening)

Brandon Sanderson

This has happened already in the world, and it does help.

-Nayrb

Did this happen "on screen"?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO.

/r/books AMA 2015 (July 30, 2015)

 

Spoiler

Argent

We know that you can't Lash people in Shardplate, but can you Lash the person inside the Plate? If they had their helm off, for example. At that point Plate should be just dead weight, right? 

Brandon Sanderson

There's a bit of an interference envelope. Wearing plate, the person has this big ball of investiture around them, and so pushing any through it--even by touching a person without a helm--is going to be tough. Easier than with the helm on though, I suppose.

Investiture acts (roughly) like a saturated solution in these cases. Sticking more power into something like a Feruchemical storage or a hyper-invested object like Plate is increasingly hard. The other part is that Investiture tends to interfere with other Investiture, unless there's a familiar resonance. (This is part of what philosophers call Identity.) Slapping your hand through a sand master's stream of sand will cause interference, and make them start to drop. It's not that the sand is supporting them, it's that the investiture holding them up gets scrambled for a moment because of your own investiture.

Investiture pushed toward someone inside a hyper-invested (supersaturated) system like a person in Shardplate is going to get hard push-back.

This is similar to the reason that it's harder to Push on invested coins. Depends on how invested they are, in that case. It's generally not as hard as doing something like Lashing a person in plate. (This is more about the interference than the saturation of investiture.) But the two principles are what I use to guide the physics in these areas.

quietandproud

Can we take that as a hint that the Investiture in the Plates and the Investiture that the Surge of [Adhesion] uses come from different Shards? Or do they interfere because they "belong" to different spren?

Brandon Sanderson

You know, I should have realized this one would bring out the follow up questions. Let's leave it at what I posted for now. This is a deep, deep rabbit hole, and I do need to try to get some more writing done tonight. So...RAFO. (Sorry.)

Stormlight Three Update #4 (Nov. 2, 2016)

 

Edited November 9, 2024 by alder24

[Determination]

So first off, it wasn't until I came back after posting and saw the the little "1 year later..." thing that I realized I resurrected a long dead thread. Whoops. Maybe by this time next year, I'll be able to look at the number 2023 and think "that's not this year".

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

No, that's not a Shardplate - Shardplates glow, those armors don't glow. It's a detail hard to miss when you see a Shardplate for the first time. Shardplates also give the strength of 10-20 men, they would rip those vines apart with no problem if that was a Shardplate. That armor is nothing like a Shardplate. 

My assumption was that it would be dead plate, and therefore wouldn't actually glow. I also got the impression that the vines were mostly effective because it confused the Awakened/Lifeless soldiers, and their programming didn't anticipate being immobilized like that. I suspect they could have indeed ripped the vines apart, had they not been dumb robot-zombies.

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

Moreover, death breaks the Nahel Bond between the knight and the Radiant so Lifeless won't be able to have Shardplates or Shardblades on their own. Spren can decide to break the bond as well - they can't be forced to stay with someone they don't want to. Furthermore, Lifeless souls are replaced with Breaths - a fake soul with a different identity, so they normally can't use abilities they had while being alive. The original soul of either Radiants or Fused that gave them powers is gone, Breaths can't replace that. After death, it's just a normal dead corpse, it has no powers. Arsteel is an example of this. He was Returned before he died, as the Lifeless Clod he isn't like Returned, he can't do things Returned can - his Divine Breath left his body when he died. 

That's all true, but you don't need any special powers to wear Shardplate (or to wield a Deadeyed Blade for that matter, but I'm not suggesting that these soldiers had Blades). I'm also not suggesting these soldiers were still capable of Surgebinding.

13 hours ago, alder24 said:

If they were wearing a dead Shardplate, that dead (or living) plate might interfere with their Awakening, just as dead plate prevents a Radiant from using their Surgebinding - it's not attuned to their Identity.

It would probably interfere with Awakening a corpse that was currently wearing Plate, but it wouldn't stop you from stuffing an already-Awakened Lifeless into an empty set of Plate.

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Determination said:

So first off, it wasn't until I came back after posting and saw the the little "1 year later..." thing that I realized I resurrected a long dead thread. Whoops. Maybe by this time next year, I'll be able to look at the number 2023 and think "that's not this year".

My assumption was that it would be dead plate, and therefore wouldn't actually glow. I also got the impression that the vines were mostly effective because it confused the Awakened/Lifeless soldiers, and their programming didn't anticipate being immobilized like that. I suspect they could have indeed ripped the vines apart, had they not been dumb robot-zombies.

That's all true, but you don't need any special powers to wear Shardplate (or to wield a Deadeyed Blade for that matter, but I'm not suggesting that these soldiers had Blades). I'm also not suggesting these soldiers were still capable of Surgebinding.

It would probably interfere with Awakening a corpse that was currently wearing Plate, but it wouldn't stop you from stuffing an already-Awakened Lifeless into an empty set of Plate.

You did say they were "Lifeless Knights Radiant or Fused in their plates" so that implies living Shards with access to Surgebinding. 

A dead plate still looks and "shines" in such a way that Tress would have mentioned it. She just said it's armor, not "a futuristic, out of this world armor with no seams between segments, that looked like a piece of art"  - nope, it was just armor. Moreover, Riina's soldiers were said to be impervious to cannonballs and a Shardplate, with all of its power, isn't - even a few bullets shot by Wax can destroy a Shardplate segment. If Wax can do it with a gun, then a cannonball, shot from an actual cannon, can definitely break a Shardplate.

Their programming did account for immobilization - which means if they had Shardplates, the first thing they would try to do is to use the strength given by the plate to free themselves. Then they would call for help.

And if they were Autonomy's Men of Gold and Red then what are they even doing on some backwater planet, serving as Riina guards? Do you think Autonomy's private army, capable of breaking plantes, would be given to Riina just so they can guard her tower? That doesn't make any sense. And where are their guns? They had futuristic guns in TLM, in Tress they had just primitive shields and spears - why downgrade them? Why also there are just a hundred of them in Tress, if there were thousands of them in TLM?

And if they were Fused/Radiants, then the timeline doesn't fit at all for them to be Autonomy's army in TLM. Scadrial is not the first place where the Men of Gold and Red appeared. They had a history of subjugating planets on Autonomy's order that predates the events of SA. Fused and Spren, dead or alive, are also incapable of leaving Roshar as of RoW - they are tied to it by the nature of their investiture and simply can't get off the planet. We only know that Hoid was able to find a way to leave with Design and appear in Era 2, but that's not telling us how would Autonomy gather hundreds of Shardplates and Shardblade, Radiants or Fused to create her Lifeless army and get them off Roshar hundreds of years before Hoid did it.

I don't think Riina's soldiers were Autonomy's Men of Gold and Red. I also don't think Riina's army used Shardplates or Shardblades, because those armors and weapons aren't described like them. Instead, I think they were Lifeless modeled after Kalad's Phantoms - bones encased in metal. Kalad's Phantoms were taller than normal people, they were impervious to basically any weapon on Nalthis and metal would make them impervious to cannonballs. Why even use a Shardplate when you can make your own?