Chaos

Which areas/timestamps are relevant that have new information?

Well, now I feel like I'm Brandon and I'm asking deep mechanics WoBs! (It is pretty cool though.) I think the relative anchor would just break. Best case scenario, a water droplet is anchored onto, say, your coat and follows you around for a bit. I feel like you couldn't apply that much aether to a water droplet, so the anchor would probably snap very quickly. Same as if you anchored a dust particle. It's solid, but it's not going to stay in the air long. As for phase change doors, I don't think that'd work, both magically and practically. I feel like the only substance that would be conducive for that is ice, and so you'd have to keep the ice cold. Once the ice melts, whatever it's anchored to will snap for the same reasons as above. You can just make a regular, heavy door and anchor it shut. You'll see something like this in the book.

Glad to hear you think so! It is a very weird fusion of technology and magic. Originally I was going for sort of a Renaissance tech level but it's much weirder now. I would say the teleportation is body warping. So anchoring a liquid or gas... interesting, I had not thought of that. I think in the technical sense, yes, but an anchor is an effect on a point. I think if it's not a solid, there's not enough connecting the substance together. You could anchor water, but you'd probably just be left with a water droplet in the air. So the answer is: technically yes, but practically no. Like, the animal, or them as food?

1. We fund it through Patreon. patreon.com/17thshard 2. Anchoring does not protect against teleportation. 3. Yes, dramatically! There are lots of limits. I do think it would drastically change world maps. Exclaves would be very common. That and all the sky islands would make it all very challenging to do a proper world map. You can bring objects you are touching with you. Moving a mountain via teleportation would be impossible. There are many reasons why that would not work, but I don't think a person could take in enough aether to do that even if those reasons did not exist. The thing with all of these magics is it requires the aether. It's all around, but it can be used up and slowly regenerates. So if you drain the aether, you can make secure spaces that people cannot scry into or teleport into. Indeed privacy is tricky. I think such aether drains--or even teleporting a few times to consume the aether--is very common. Generally if you're doing an anchoring to stick things together they must be touching. That is not exclusively true but relative anchors at a distance is tricky (and expensive) to maintain. Regarding the battle, I had to be very careful with the overall fleet movements. It took a bit just to block out, like, "Okay this group teleports here, this group teleports here" and stuff like that. Oh Jenna... Poor girl.

I can't comment on sand, but the sun also causes tides on Earth. It's an interaction between both sun and the moon. So there could still be some tides, even if there was no moon. Or, I don't know, maybe the moons are denser than their size indicates. A moon slept with a queen that one time, so who knows

1. So the game I play the most has been Guild Wars 2, with an embarrassing amount of playtime. Probably my favorite ever was Mass Effect 2 or Fire Emblem: Awakening. 2. This was true when you posted it, and true now, but I'm doing great! Semester is done, so it's summer! I do have some summer tutoring work to do but that's fine. But today is a great day because I have finished Part Three (out of five) on my novel, putting me at the 2/3rds mark, so I'm doing awesome. I know you're trying to be helpful, and I appreciate that, but I am more than happy to take repeat questions. I don't expect people to read up or search the giant thread, to be honest. So the first and most obvious thing is that audio and video quality are very important to the show. Headset mics are not good enough. Internet quality is also essential. I just can't control that if I picked a random Sharder, and if I wanted to buy such things for people, this adds up very quickly. The other main issue is that... you just don't really know how well you'll jive with a guest. How good are they at public speaking? How well will the rapport be? They could be very knowledgeable in text but a bad option for a show. The last issue--and this is the most minor, really--is that if I pick some, but not others, I feel like people will think there's favoritism, and get upset? Even if it's totally meritless and I was choosing randomly (which, let's be honest, is a bad idea because you would need some level of vetting), there are just not that many episodes. Some people won't get to be on, and that will feel bad. It's possible we may do that, but you'll see me gravitate towards other content creators for all of these reasons. For one, I can give back to other content creators (like RAFO, for Emberdark), but also they have tech setups already and generally can talk pretty well. You'll see another episode in June where we had a guest Everyone is welcome to ask questions about Prophet King! In fact, on our Discord, Fridays are our #writing channel's weekly "ask people questions about their stuff" day, so I am very okay with answering. I'm honored! Here's a great place to ask. This is a high magic setting and there's kind of a lot going on. I will describe the three abilities that are inherent to people on this world. The first is teleportation. Yep, everyone can teleport. The next one is anchoring, where you can lock an object to a specific location, or relative to another object. This allows for airships. The last ability is viewing. People have a natural location sense and can feel objects around them, and have an intrinsic understanding of location and direction that humans on this world lack. They can use this to literally remote view and watch events from a different place. The general premise for combat in the book is that there are pegasus riders, and that with airships and teleportation means we get aerial combat where everyone can teleport. It was both extremely cool--and was a reason why this book felt special--but also very overwhelming. For many years I thought I was not capable of capturing the chaos of such fight scenes, and that they would feel incomprehensible to a reader. (Fun story, many years ago when I told Brandon that everyone could teleport, I believe he said that it would be "very difficult.") I am very happy to report that my alpha readers really liked the first aerial combat scene. Yesterday I just finished writing the largest scale battle that I've ever written. I find action scenes to be pretty challenging, and this one was a big boy with eight scenes across two POVs. It was all the aerial combat with teleportation writ large across the sky, and so I procrastinated to the bitter end in actually writing it. But, guys, it turned out really well. It was a lot of effort, but I am so pleased. This book is ultimately too long for it to really be picked up by a publisher for a debut author, but alpha feedback has been really good. I have historically been far too critical of my own work and always wanted to revise things midway through, which led to me never finish anything. Let me just say: I think this is going very well, and this book is something special and intriguing. Some day you'll all get to read it, and I hope you enjoy it! (Except for what I did in the second to last chapter of Part Three. No one will know what I'm talking about for years, but, yeah. Sorrrrrrrrry, that was always planned to happen!)

Hmmmm, I thought this was fixed in the new version. I hadn't seen reports of this since the update. Treamayne's information is based off the old version and may not be accurate. We will look into this. Sorry about that.

I... don't really think evolutionary biologists would really phrase their thoughts as a "mutation" of it. I don't even understand what that is supposed to mean. I haven't read On the Origin of Species, no. Well, I mean, it doesn't really seem all-good to allow such suffering for hundreds of thousands of years of our species existence just to... eventually defeat evil. He could do it right now. He has a realm where he's glorified forever in Heaven. Yet all the suffering is worth it so he can be even more glorified? Yikes. I'm sure he will get around to destroying Satan eventually. In the meantime, sucks for humans, right? I guess we just have to suck it up and once God does destroy evil then those people remaining... don't have to suffer like we did? Interesting strategy. But let's grant that the theological answer is actually sufficient (which to be clear, I think is very weak). There's still been animals for hundreds of millions of years old. There's been untold death inherent in the cycle of evolution. So much suffering. Was it evil for animals to eat other animals? At least most religious definitions seem to not say animals are moral actors. But certainly nature can be horrifically brutal. How much pain and suffering have animals gone through in millions of years purely based off of natural laws--not human caused evil--that God created? His best plan required all of that suffering? All that starvation and death? All to eventually just have humans eventually exist and to glorify God? That seems... kind of insane to justify that, frankly. So I think animal suffering at the very least shows God cannot be all loving. Even if we discount animals feeling pain, so many humans die from natural reasons that are not caused by humanity's "fall". There are so many viruses and parasites and horrible maladies in God's incredible creation just to destroy us and make us miserable. To make us suffer. That's been happening to humanity and its ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years. It seems to me like a lot of ad-hoc rationalization to make theism fit this. I would say theism would seem a lot more digestible if Earth was actually young and God did create species as there was. He's omnipotent, He could do it. He went with the plan of millions of years of suffering instead. It would be pretty compelling evidence for God if we did descend from two people and could see it in genetics. Or if there were separately created kinds, perfectly designed. But that's just not where we are at. Let's be real though. When infants die, isn't the common refrain that they are in a better place? That means it is not actually necessary to do the song and dance of suffering on Earth to get to Heaven. You can just skip that part and get eternal joy, and it happens so often. That just makes no sense to me. Either living life and suffering is important for the afterlife, or it isn't. You can say that, yeah, sure, you can't truly appreciate Heaven unless you have suffered, so what, those babies can't truly appreciate it? The system seems totally nonsensical under scrutiny. I think things make far more sense that, yeah, the universe doesn't care about us and suffering sucks, but it's a thing. It's so much harder to make this work with some all powerful, all knowing, all loving God to think that He is actually totally cool with this. Allowing evil only gets you so far. And let's be real, you can blame Adam and Eve for the fall all you want, but God put the tree there. He didn't have to. He could have explained the consequences. He did none of that. Sounds like he specifically created the world and the conditions to make us suffer. I can only assume that He wanted it this way, and it is just preposterous to me that this was really the best way. I just can't get behind a God who punishes people and all their descendents to suffer when they did no crime, nor can I get behind a supposed all-loving God who lets so many infants starve every single day. Is all of that all worth some greater good later? I mean... I guess, but God doesn't sound very good to me. He finds glorifying himself more important than all the suffering in hundreds of millions of years. If a human ruler did that even for a short time, they would rightfully be called a monster. If a parent did that to their children, letting some starve to death so the other kids could truly understand how thankful they should be to have food themselves... The parent would not be considered good! I don't see why even if God was the creator that He gets a pass there. "He works in mysterious ways" or "His ways are higher" is not sufficient, when to me, "Theism makes no sense" is right there for the taking.

We haven't recorded it and won't for a while, so likely July. Things could shift, though.

Generally, Darwinism and "Darwinist" are words that are derogatory, trying to paint anyone who accepts the overwhelming amount of evidence for the theory of evolution as a follower of just another belief system. I don't think any biologist or scientist would use that label. Darwin lived in the 1800s, and did not even know of the mechanism on how traits were passed down. No Mendel, no genetics. We have over a hundred and fifty years of additional scientific knowledge on evolution, and the theory has been expounded upon immensely. Natural selection and gradualism are things, but there are lots of evolutionary mechanisms, and natural selection isn't the only one! All of the mechanisms are directly observable, as is speciation (yes, we've literally witnessed species changing into new species, and it's happened multiple times, both in the wild and in controlled laboratory settings). We know so much more than Darwin ever did. Current evolutionary biology is so much more robust and explanatory. Scientists do not worship Darwin, he's just a guy who had some revolutionary ideas that panned out well. I'm not an Einsteinist or a Newtonist, either. However, evolution very much is as strong a scientific theory as any other (and by that, compare to things like "theory of gravitation," "germ theory," or "atomic theory"). Not only do we directly observe evolution--be it novel traits that require multiple simultaneous mutations to function at all (a great example is Cit+ in the Long Term Evolution Experiment, it's awesome), or speciation itself--but now we have genetics, which corroborates evolution and gives even more mountains of evidence! The entire genome of everything forms beautiful nested hierarchies, both in functional regions of the genome and parts that have no function at all. It beautifully corroborates the tree of life and common descent. And this is barely scratching the surface, and I didn't even talk about fossils at all! I could talk about that a lot, but how many times do scientists need to predict, "Hey, I think I will find a species with this mix of traits" to find a common ancestor, and not only that, but predict which time and location the species would be, and then they find that exact thing, for people to repeat it? Because that's happened a lot! Predictions and repeatability! So, if you mean, "Do I accept the theory of evolution?" Of course the answer is yes. There is so much evidence! It is literally foundational to biology. For a very simple primer to evolution, check out this video series below. It's beautifully simple at its core. If you've seen some of my answers here or on the religion thread, when I say I'm not convinced a God exists, I want to be dazzled with incontrovertible evidence that even the most ardent skeptic would be convinced by. Not one thing, but mountains of things. Theism, if true, should fit the data perfectly and be able to make predictions that we see bear out in the evidence over and over again. And I should not need to already believe a thing to see the evidence in this light. Because that's how evidence works. Yes, scientists have ego, and their own ideas they like the best, but at the end of the day, people judge the evidence. It doesn't matter if it sounds insane that spacetime is warped by gravity and light can bend, because when Einstein could calculate and see a star around the Sun in the exact position he calculated, you just have to say... well crap, guess you're right! Belief is irrelevant. If someone says something fantastical and has the receipts, then there you go. And by the way, I have receipts on all the evolution and science stuff I said! Anyway, that's probably more than you asked for, but I am still thinking of a comment in the Religion thread with fundamental misconceptions about evolution, so this has been bubbling in my head for months. Also, "Social Darwinists" are full of crap and bastardize the entire notion of "survival of the fittest." Humanity, as a whole, has done a very good job of removing selection pressures and making natural selection not really a thing for us now. For example, C-sections are literally removing a selection pressure on skull size! Neat!

Sorry for the delay! Breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day and I typically eat a bagel for breakfast, but this has a lot of problems. I need something a bit bigger, but it's way too much effort to actually cook something in the morning This is quite late, but you don't need differential equations in this at all. It's a proven result from the power series for sine, cosine, and e^x (it can be shown that exponents work for complex numbers, but you probably wouldn't do that until complex analysis). It is quite a surprising fact, but perhaps not that surprising, considering sine, cosine, and e^x all have power series with infinite radii of convergence. Also perhaps not surprising considering the powers of i go in a pattern of 4's: i^0 = 1 i^1 = i i^2 = -1 (by definition) i^3 = -i i^4 = -(i^2) = -(-1) = 1 What else does the same thing? Well, take four derivatives of sine or cosine, and you get right back to the same spot! Many things in the complex plane don't quite work the way you might expect. In particular, if you have a function that is differentiable everywhere on the complex plane, there are only two situations: 1. It is a constant, or 2. It blows up to infinity when you get far from the origin. Isn't that strange? There are no differentiable functions that are bounded like sine and cosine are, oscillating between 1 and -1. That cannot happen. Complex valued sine and cosine do blow up to infinity as you go along the imaginary axis. But yes, it's a weird one. In some sense, you just have to look at the proof and if you can't find an issue with it, we roll with it. And we do! We express complex numbers in polar this way and it can be very useful. In fact, you can prove a lot of trig identities by going into the complex plane through it. Not a worry at all. Dense stuff. I'll trust experts on that. It's kind of unintelligible to me unless I spent a lot of time trying to parse it. In general, ontological proofs of God always seem like they are trying to define God into existence. Cool, but that's not exactly persuasive when in my opinion--and many other atheists--the universe is remarkably silent about the existence of God, and how the universe and Earth came to be certainly seems to discredit the idea of an all-good and all-powerful God. Theism has a lot of work cut out for it, and I've been looking at apologists, and the answers look... extremely weak. This is the best world that could be, and it required millions and millions of years of animals to suffer and die to make the process of evolution work? It sure looks like a very directionless process that seems more in line with no one in the driver's seat to me. Of course, there are many, many theistic evolutionists around, but if you have no horse in the race on whether or not God exists, I'd certainly say the universe seems much more in line with the hypothesis that there is not.

Ah, I see. If anyone knows where the other two are--what that other person claimed--we'd certainly love to know. I personally do not know.

I don't understand your question. What do you mean "come out"? What are you trying to buy?

I feel like Azir is a great example of appropriate usage of information. I do agree in some sense that yes, there should be a "Main article: Makabakam" and we should do our best to not repeat information on both pages. But Silver Kingdom information is limited. This is tricky. I'm sure there could be some sentences, theoretically, in some of these articles that should be on the appropriate Silver Kingdom page. Maybe some Makabakam stuff should be here, and we could discuss particulars. However, I do think there's a balance here. I think these modern nation pages should be pretty thorough, and so there should be some reference to what happened before, but keep it brief if there is another article that the information could be more appropriate for. So I'd be opposed unilaterally removing all of this from, say, Azir or Alethkar. It's kind of like the difference between Hallandren and Hanald pages, which look to me to be pretty appropriate. Most people will search Hallandren, and so you want some info on Hanald/Manywar stuff on Hallandren's page, but you want the details to be on Hanald. Taking a quick look at Alethkar, I feel like there is probably a way to compactify/summarize the Alethela stuff on that page and have the majority of that be on the Alethela page. The Alethela page is... much worse than that section on the Alethkar page. There might be others in this category, and so we could talk about specifics, sure.

Huh. That's exceedingly strange... EDIT: If anyone else sees this, go try and PM me and see if you get that message "@Chaos cannot receive messages" there, and post back to see.

It is possible they have disabled PMs. Please message me with who you are trying to contact and I'll look into it.

Please make sure to take Stormlight 5 content in topic titles!

Argenti is not 100% correct; there was an old achievement system (which that old post was mentioning), but this new Badges thing is a system we could use with this new version, that is built into the site and isn't an add-on. There is a robust system to do this, we just haven't yet. Not sure when we would.

Yes, the emails you would have gotten in the interim are lost to the aether.

For category names, I would probably go with Canticlite, and not have it be a subcategory of Threnodite. I am sure there are going to be all sorts of weirdness of groups going to different places that could get messy quickly. That seems like it's better to have the Threnodite connection listed in article text.

This was intentional initially. Maybe there's enough detail to put in, now, but I'm not convinced. It is perhaps because of my desire to not copy real life topics. It would be a pretty tricky article to write if we did choose to want it. I feel like at least some of the differences that are listed in this topic are not special to humans, and so are maybe more appropriate on Investiture / Realmatic Theory pages. So anyway, this wasn't an oversight, it was intentional as we didn't really want to make one. We could reconsider.

Same. We will work to resolve this. EDIT: The mail server is back up, so hoooopefully this is fixed now?

This has been implemented.