Signing and Magic at Dragon's Keep in Orem

[Shardlet he/him]

I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to the fact that Brandon will be playing magic and signing books (and answering questions) tonight at Dragon's Keep in Orem.  Is anyone going to attend?  If so, please arm yourself with some sort of recording device.  There is going to be a Magic draft that costs $15.  To register call the store at 801-225-2039.  The time and address is:

Time: 6:30 p.m. until very late
Address: 48 W 300 N
Orem, UT 84057

[Shardbearer he/him]

I wish I still lived in Utah...

 

Even though I don't know how to play Magic.

[Kurkistan he/him]

It's fairly easy. I went to my first game/draft just the other night and picked up the basics in a few minutes. More complicated stuff over the next hour or so, then I was fully aware of how bad I was.

 

It's like Yu-Gi-Oh, but more sensible.

[Shardlet he/him]

Oh my, you are showing your age a bit by saying Magic is like Yu-Gi-Oh rather than the converse.  Or perhaps I am showing my age by making this comment.  I started playing Magic in the summer of '94.  I abandoned it in the summer of '96 for Legend of the Five Rings.  I still have all my L5R cards.  Anybody else out there ever play L5R?

[Natans he/him]

Oh my, you are showing your age a bit by saying Magic is like Yu-Gi-Oh rather than the converse.  Or perhaps I am showing my age by making this comment.  I started playing Magic in the summer of '94.  I abandoned it in the summer of '96 for Legend of the Five Rings.  I still have all my L5R cards.  Anybody else out there ever play L5R?

 

And talking about showing age =)

 

And yes in old and long forget drawer

 

If anyone want learn play magic to beat Sanderson in one of this signings, there is a app called "Wagic" that do the trick very well. By the way anyone know if he has a rule like "beat me and you can read a ARC copy of WOR" ? That would be nice.

[Shardbearer he/him]

I played  the free 2013 Ipad app for a while, but didn't want to spend the money to upgrade to the full version. That is the extent of my knowledge on how to play the game.

 

I used to play a Star Wars CCG.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Oh my, you are showing your age a bit by saying Magic is like Yu-Gi-Oh rather than the converse.  Or perhaps I am showing my age by making this comment.  I started playing Magic in the summer of '94.  I abandoned it in the summer of '96 for Legend of the Five Rings.  I still have all my L5R cards.  Anybody else out there ever play L5R?

 

Oh yes, I am a young and ill-mannered youth.

[bartbug he/him]

Did anyone go to this?

[firstRainbowRose she/her]

I did.  Nothing truly interesting to discuss, I think.  One clarification about the color of the next book, and that Kaladin's order is the combination of Air and Pressure.  Some fancy physics stuff about how there are 3 major force or pressure thingies, and in SLA there are ten, but I didn't really get most of that , so I won't be very good at explaining it to you.... sorry guys.  In other news the new book will be purple!

[Kurkistan he/him]

Thanks for the report, fRR.

 

A few small clarifications, though:

 

-Air and Pressure? Not Gravity?

 

-Purple? Like, the cover, or the binding, or... 

Edited November 22, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Argent he/him]

Binding I imagine. Hardcover. Like the first one is blue. I don't have the Orders table, does purple match the Lightweavers' glyph?

[Kurkistan he/him]

That's what I thought was most likely as well, just double-checking.

 

And yes, good catch: the Lightweavers are purple.

[deddinty]

Actually Lightweavers are garnet, which is more red than purple.  Kalek is amythest which would be true purple from the ten essences tables source. I'd have to see the shade though, since a lot of people think garnet is rather purple.

Edited November 23, 2013 by deddinty

[Guest Alaxel]

Ah ha, that's interesting that it's purple. I'll hazard to guess - nay, I'll completely and with no evidence espouse the idea that wavelengths of light are instrumental in determining which powers they can fuel.

Attention, Kurk.

I will throw my Eldrazi Monument cards into the trash if this is not the case. Those cards hapoen to be the cornerstone of my undeafted deck. I have four.

[Kurkistan he/him]

@purpleness

 

The glyph-color for the Lightweavers is reddish-purple, I'd say. Close enough.

 

Ah ha, that's interesting that it's purple. I'll hazard to guess - nay, I'll completely and with no evidence espouse the idea that wavelengths of light are instrumental in determining which powers they can fuel.

Attention, Kurk.

I will throw my Eldrazi Monument cards into the trash if this is not the case. Those cards hapoen to be the cornerstone of my undeafted deck. I have four.

 

I'll give you this one. 

 

Source:

ArsenoPyrite:

I have a technical question here re: gemstones in The Stormlight Archive. How are the lines drawn between different types of gem? Emerald and Heliodor are both varieties of the mineral beryl. Emerald can get its color from trace amounts of chromium, vanadium and/or iron. Heliodor gets its color from iron combined with microscopic crystal defects. So, is the line between these two defined by color? If so, would a heliodor lose its usefulness if it were heated (which would turn it colorless or pale blue). Is it defined by trace elements--in which case, how do you deal with emeralds, or with aquamarine (the blue variety of beryl, which can also contain chromium or vanadium in small quantities and is mostly colored by iron). Sorry for getting so technical, but this gem nerd needs to know!

 

Brandon:

I actually spent a long time working on this while building the world. You'd probably be amused by how long I spent on it. Chemically, many of them are actually very similar, as you pointed out. I tried doing the book originally with them all being different, not using any that were basically the same crystal with different colors, but it didn't work out. There weren't enough, and so I had to stretch to make it all work.

 

So, I went back to the original, and decided that color was enough to differentiate them. Just as steel and iron are very similar in the mistborn world, Emerald and Heliodor can be very similar--but produce different effects. The idea here is that the physical items (like the metals or the crystals) provide a key by which magical interaction occurs.

 

So, in a long winded answer, a gemstone with an impure color would be considered like a bad alloy in the Mistborn magic--it either wouldn't work at all, or would work very poorly. The chemical and color signature needs to be of a specific variety to provide the proper key to accessing the power of transformation.

 

 

So color and chemical signiatures are important. Note, though, that Brandon has said that, so far as "what powers they can fuel," all stormlight-holding gems are created equal for most surgebinders: It's just soulcasting that's weird.

 

---

 

Color is still a component of it, though, so as I said I'll let it slide.

 

If your sense of honor demands that this interpretation is too generous, though, you can just mail the cards to me rather than throwing them out.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Kurkistan

[askthepaperclip he/him]

I did.  Nothing truly interesting to discuss, I think.  One clarification about the color of the next book, and that Kaladin's order is the combination of Air and Pressure.  Some fancy physics stuff about how there are 3 major force or pressure thingies, and in SLA there are ten, but I didn't really get most of that , so I won't be very good at explaining it to you.... sorry guys.  In other news the new book will be purple!

Air and pressure?? Now I think Brandon might just be messing with us...lol

 

I assume the fancy physics stuff was about comparing the four "fundamental forces" of our world to the 10 surges of Roshar...?