Chapter 19 & 20 Discussion

[alder24]

12 minutes ago, listerfeend said:

Yes, he did shoot down the theory that it is a spaceship, but not that it could be one, as you stated. I really don't think that its size or shape much matters when you have people that can manipulate gravity, and teleport things around. Just have to get that massive tower into space, and then you can do whatever you want with it.

The bigger it is, the harder it is to get it to move, the more energy it is required to move it FTL, the more ridiculous amounts of investiture is needed. Even Brandon said that moving the Tower just between Ashyn and Roshar would have been hard, moving it between stars would be nearly impossibly hard. 

14 minutes ago, listerfeend said:

Could they maybe transfer the Sibling into something that would be more suited to spaceflight? I feel like that is definitely possible, and would solve your issues of the size and structure of Urithuru as it stands, while still making "Urithuru" (the things that it can do) the spaceship.

The Sibling isn't the whole Tower, they are just fabrials and crystal veins. The walls and floors are made out of normal stone, Stoneshaped long ago from the mountain of Ur. Theoretically you can make it smaller, but that would require to create a new shell for the Sibling and move them there - which probably is too much to ask from them. Yes, you want to have a cool spacecraft, but you are basically sacrificing a whole city and transportation hub on Roshar, which is and still will be incredibly important in the future. And you know, the Tower can house tens if not hundreds of thousands of people there, right now it's nearly empty. It has some farming space, but providing food for the fully inhabited Tower would require so much more than you can grow there. Everyone would be starving after a week of travel. Not to mention the amount of water you would need for all of them...

Why not just build a normal steel spaceship from scratch and incorporate in it fabrials that make the Tower functional? It's much easier to do, much easier to move it out or the Rosharan system, it would function like the Tower with all of its pressure, temperature and other fabrials, just add gravitation fabrials to the mix, more defence fabrials and it's as good as Urithiru, without moving the entire city and it's population into space. 

[+robardin he/him]

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

No, me too. I don't know why everyone is so confused by this. 

Odium was clearly trapped on Roshar by some kind of binding oath. That's not ambiguous.

It's about Wit's comment on how Rayse discovered that PREVIOUS oaths made "by the power" carried over after the death of the Vessel.

 

[listerfeend]

 

2 hours ago, alder24 said:

The bigger it is, the harder it is to get it to move, the more energy it is required to move it FTL, the more ridiculous amounts of investiture is needed. Even Brandon said that moving the Tower just between Ashyn and Roshar would have been hard, moving it between stars would be nearly impossibly hard. 

Honestly, none of that makes that much impact in my brain. If you can get it into space, you can get it from there to literally anywhere else. It's size doesn't make much of a difference in zero gravity, it's not large enough to have a substantial gravity well, and, again, you have an entire Order of people who's entire schtick is messing around with gravity. Bondsmith augmented Elsecalling to get it to space, big lashings to get it moving. Or, I recently had an idea for gravitation fabrials that might do the trick. Gravity compression at the front, expansion at the back, and boom, warp drive. Or maybe the opposite, either way. 

My thought with moving the Sibling to a new "vessel" for this is exactly what you are talking about, though. My thoughts being that the Sibling can provide the Investiture to run the entire thing, as well as all of the functionality to make it livable. 

Edited October 9, 2024 by listerfeend

[GudThymes he/him]

2 hours ago, robardin said:

It's about Wit's comment on how Rayse discovered that PREVIOUS oaths made "by the power" carried over after the death of the Vesse

That isn't what Wit said though, that's an interpretation. This is the exact quote:

Quote

More, they aren’t quite bound in the same way. Oh, they’ll have to keep this agreement for the contest of champions—a formal agreement like that binds the power, not just the individual, something Rayse himself discovered long ago. But lesser promises—like the one made to Dalinar about not exploiting loopholes—are a different matter. He is breaking that one easily, because he did not make it.

Wit says a formal agreement bonds the power and the vessel both. Wit could have meant what you said or he could have meant something else. Rayse could have made a promise and then thought that his unmade could carry it out but since they're also the power they couldn't.

Or something else entirely. We are trying to predicate our argument on something that isn't definitive. And Odium as a shard didn't even exist prior to Rayse, if he is bound by something Ado did, then every Shard must be.

Also @Ashbringer I was confused by what you said about Ishar and danwshards. I thought Ishar had never held a danwshard?

Something is definitely binding the various Shards and I think it can only be either something related to the nature of Ado and the danwshards or related to the oaths the vessels swore to each other when ascending.

[who_slew_aicirtap she/they]

I'm obsessed with flower symbolism, and dandelions symbolize emotional healing, resilience, and hope. I wonder if that was intentional.

[Ashbringer he/him]

53 minutes ago, GudThymes said:

Also @Ashbringer I was confused by what you said about Ishar and danwshards. I thought Ishar had never held a danwshard?

Dawnshards were used to break Ashyn, and we know Ishar was involved in that, as was Odium. I don't think we know explicitly that Ishar was a Dawnshard in the past, but putting two and two together...

Regardless, my point is more that it seems Odium manipulated Ishar or other Ashynites to destroy their planet using Dawnshards, then Dawnshards were also used at some point on Roshar as well. But neither time did Odium or Honor seek to take them themselves and obliterate their foe, which is what Dawnshard+Shard would seem to result in. (All Investiture needs Intent and a Command, and Shards are Intents while Dawnshards are Commands... hmmm...)

 

It also seems likely that the Shards would make some rules over the weapon they just used to kill God that they also knew could most likely kill them, so that too.

[Dofurion]

Quote

“Raised me?” Adolin said. Angerspren pooled like blood at his feet—one of the few varieties of spren that ignored her orders. “You didn’t raise me, Father. You killed the woman who did.”

This comment from Navani about the Angersprens reminded me of the theory that the Unmade are simply lesser Sprens that Odium stuffed with his investiture.

I want to accompany this with a hypothesis of my own. During the shattering all the investiture in the Cosmere aligned with some Shard, and this being the case. Could it be that the reason Tanavast and Koravellium decided to move to Roshar in particular was not because of the wide access to investiture, but rather because Roshar naturally aligned itself with the shards they both carried? This is obviously not absolute since until we are told otherwise, there is Autonomy investiture on Scadrial which he took advantage of to create his Avatar, despite the planet in theory being pure Preservation and Ruin investiture.

Therefore, from the group of Sprens existing in the local cognitive fauna, they could have aligned themselves with other Intent. Could it be that a group of 9 Spren that, like the Angerspren, obeyed neither Honor nor Cultivation were the ones that Rayse chose to Undo (?).

Sprens such as: Angerprens, Passionspren, etc.

[josmarrob]

Going back to people talking about another attack on the tower,there might be a way for an attack to happen other than Skybreakers. Do we know if the Sibling's defenses are all or nothing or can they make exceptions?

What if Odium found a way to get his investiture into someone who Dalinar would have trouble fighting such as Gavinor, AND that because of this the defenses would trigger on Gavinor. Would the Sibling be able to make an expection for Gavinor or would the defenses have to be turned off completely? If the defenses had to be turned off completely and Dalinar could not bring himself to kill Gavinor then the fused would be free to attack the rest of the tower because the peace treaty doesn't kick in until after the duel.

[Dofurion]

Just now, josmarrob said:

Going back to people talking about another attack on the tower,there might be a way for an attack to happen other than Skybreakers. Do we know if the Sibling's defenses are all or nothing or can they make exceptions?

In theory there should be exceptions, after all we have Renarin and Rlain relatively calm in the tower without suffering headaches or similar (although the issue of their Sprens is still a cause for debate)