Kurkistan

I'll have to agree with Phantom that Sazed's use of zincminds results in a quantitative difference in how fast his thoughts are, while Taravangian's changed intelligence seems very much qualitative.

But do they? Or is it entirely locked up in just making their body run properly?

I picked up Torchlight--because, free--andd bought FTL (amazing game, simple but surprisingly engaging) awhile back, but I'm not a regular customer. I'm teetering on whether to buy from the summer sale, as I already have a shameful backlog from various Humble Bundles.

Yeah. we've still got interludes and epigraphs, not to mention drafts and edits and printing and...

Fair enough. At leat you're honest. I was referring to this quote, which, I argue (rather well, if I may say so) proves pretty well that Hessina's "there's a spren in everything" is, more properly, talking about everything having some kind of Cognitive aspect, which is quite distinct from the spren we see, the ones that represent forces, emotions, and whatnot. So while a coppermind has "a spren" in the sense that it has a definite conception of how its viewed and how its viewed by others, it most likely does not have the more active version. So, if you accept what I say, then you won't have any kind of copper-spren to facilitate such an entanglement.

Are you aware that "copperspren" is almost certainly what we would call a Cognitive Aspect, and not properly a spren in the active sense of the word?

I'm just going to assume that that was an intentional Unbreakable reference. Given that assumption, well done.

Our differences may come down to differing perceptions of degrees of formality, then. I think the majority of discussions on these boards can be categorized as at least partially informal. Some few try for total rigor, but lie somewhere between bare statements of opinion and semi-substantiated theorizing based at least in part on what "feels right". Because of this large amount of "informality", at least so far as argumentation goes, I think intuition should just as generally be given its due.

Just to be clear, then: You place no value whatsoever on intuitions that are not linked to independent (if perhaps intuition-inspired) argumentation?

Interesting. I'm going to keep on with this one, though. I suppose I'll have to withdraw my qualification for the Koloss as particularly twisted, rather than Ruinized. Very well, new alternate explanation (because that's how I roll): Note the language of the passage you have just quoted "[inquisitors and koloss] are both affected by Ruin's impulses even when he isn't directly controlling them". Depending on how these things break down, Realmatically, the Ruinization of Hemalurgists looks to be a result of some kind of "resonance" with the Shard, rather than Hemalurgy in and of itself. Furthermore, I think we can easily see a number of states of affairs such that either Ruin's merging with Preservation or Sazed's (non Intent-twisted) control of Ruin would do away with this state of being "affected by Ruin's impulses". If "Ruin's impulses" are simply Ruin the Shard's raw Intent, then I'll have to rely on that Intent somehow being nullified by the merger with Preservation. However, if "Ruin's impulses" were actually Ati's impulses, though he was twisted by Ruin's Intent to the point where it made no difference, then a non-twisted Sazed would naturally not send out such destructive impulses. He might even send out some good vibes, naturally. Alternatively, Ruin always has "Ruinize Hemalurgists" on at a low burn, on purpose, just because he can.

The only source I can find to that effect is this one, which is discussing direct Ruinous influence, not permanent, constant, natural Ruinization through the simple use of Hemalurgy. Though the Blessing of Presence may account of TenSoon not twisting "naturally" as well, the source is not direct on that matter.

While I still think that Inquisitors are all being Ruinized all the time, I will give you Koloss. That might be more a result of their changed nature as monstrosites rather than simple Hemalurgy, though. By the logic that the spikes caused Koloss to be Ruinous, 4-spike TenSoon should have been as bad as a Koloss.

I'll go along with Thought's "Forging" variant. So far as "remote access", I would hazard that it can never work. We know that breaking up a coppermind will break up the memories, despite the fact that the proper magic system might well be able to "heal" that coppermind into being whole again based upon its Cognitive perception of being whole. Unless physical objects' Cognitive identities lack any inertia at all, which I doubt. EDIT: Beyond that, I also doubt it on a gut level ( ). Feruchemists need to touch their metalminds to get them to work. That's how it goes. Beyond my omniscient gut, though, I would say that a strong Cognitive unity coupled with actual physical unity might do the trick for a tattoo, but a rapidly weakening Cognitive unity without the accompanying physical unity isn't enough.

While binary logic is quite nice, Thought, we live in a world of probabilities and degrees of proof. Beyond appeals to authority or any such thing, if I'm looking at two competing theories of otherwise equal merit (or lack of merit), and Chaos weighs in on one of them and says "this doesn't feel right to me", then you can bet which one I'll choose if I have to pick one or the other. It doesn't mean that my world will be shattered if Chaos' gut was wrong, but I would be at least a tad surprised. We also have the fact that we are talking about authored works, and so it's not a case of saying that the speed of light being constant doesn't "feel right" or some such statement about the physical world, but instead our intuitions are at least partially, based on our understanding of Brandon as an author.

It's my impression that Ruin has to be acting actively Ruinous to actually affect a spiked individual's mind.

Yes, sorry, I misunderstood your meaning, Morsk. I think most of us are talking about how it "sounds" in text, and so I just assumed you hadn't found the transcript for some reason. Actually listening to inflection in the audio didn't really occur to me; I suppose that it's because none of us are used to actually being able to hear what a character sounds like

@Shardlet First of all, I have to say this: Your avatar is creepy . No hard feelings, but I've been wanting to get that one off my chest. Now a terminator-cat, that I can understand. But an uncomfortable closeup of a human eye with a double pupil *shudder*. Second, in regard to your reply to Phantom, I believe that they bridgemen simply had shieldbearers running out ahead, but were not themselves armored. A minor point, but it most likely resulted in even lower causalities for any given volley fired at a shielded bridge than from firing into massed troops who were not perfectly protected from above as well as being adequately protected horizontally. Third, in regard to your reply to me, you make some good points as well. I don't think trying to kill as many men as possible needs to be a case of tactical ignorance. I'm really just going to latch onto this egalitarian ideal of each man being equal, and say that the Parshendi follow it to a T, overriding tactical concerns that they are well aware of. I do like your thoughts on why the Parshendi might hold such a view, by the way. If I may try again, I would hypothesize that the Parshendi view all active combatants equally, for their own sake. That they are honoring the bridgemen by killing them, by treating them equally as warriors on the field of battle. When the bridges have been laid, the bridgemen retire from the battle, and so are no longer combatants, and equal treatment of all no longer demands that they be treated as such. It's a bit of a play on the Kantian idea that a we owe it to the dignity of a man who commits a crime to punish him, rather than attempt "rehabilitation" that would disrespect his agency. The Parhsendi owe it to the bridgemen to try to kill them. This could either be presented in lieu of or parallel to the "kill as many as possible" argument, with the killing of any warrior being both honorable and of the same "value" as killing any other.

Also, I'm not sure if by "urban" you mean "not epic" or just "not modern era Earth", but if you mean the former, I'm always looking for excuses to recommend Steven Brust's Dragaera books. They star a mob boss/hitman with a snarky flying not!dragon sidekick in a caste-separated nigh-eternal empire of elves. Kind of westernish, but not really. Okay, that may sound a bit overdone. Trust me, though, they're good. Brust takes forever to write a book, but there's more than a dozen out at the moment. They were published out of chronological order, so you can read them multiple ways, but I think it's best to read them in publishing order, then you can have fun reading them chronologically if you feel like double dipping. The main series has 13 books, then there's a set of "romances"--styled after the Three Musketeers--set in the same world that has 5 books.

I linked to the Google Doc in this post.

Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series has a political/social structure based on ancient Rome, though the tech level is also based on them. The Tales of the Otori books by Lian Hearn is Japanese (I honestly can't remember if I liked this or most of it's content. That's not a particularly good sign, but I did finish them). One of Brandon's former students, Brian McClellan, recently released Promise of Blood, which is decent enough. Gunpowder-level tech level in the aftermath of a military coup, though still western-based. The Riftwar cycle (Raymond E. Fiests, a ton of books) is mostly western, but there's a few novels (the Empire Trilogy) that essentially stand by themselves and are set primarily in a japan-inspired (though not slavishly so) setting. Still has a medieval tech level, sadly. I can't recall any others that meet your criteria, at least not off the top of my head. I'd probably pick the Codex Alera books, if I could only give one recommendation. They're essentially Jim Butcher's response to a dare, one which should be absurd but instead is absurdly awesome. If it makes you feel better, Brandon shares your frustrations, which is why the 2nd Mistborn trilogy (which he's writing after Stormlight 5) will be set in the modern era and the 3rd will be sci-fi.

I don't think that would work. Since chalklings move entirely in 2D, the "force fields" of Lines' of Forbiddance don't really matter to them. I think we have fairly storng indications that chalkings only care about 2D and chalk, while the force-field effect is in the 3D world and is not really meant to interfere with chalkings. Recall that the last Rithmatic student chalklingized drew additional Lines along the walls to stop the Chalklings from just climbing around his initial line and thus bypassing the line. If the force field was enough, then simply drawing one line that butted against he wall and had a high enough force field to reach the ceiling would do the trick. Because of this, I think that the chalking could simply climb down the side of the trench and attack the Line from there, as they would have no problem being on the same plane as its edge.

I may have been somewhat unclear in my intention for my post. Beyond simple ignorance, the Parshendi could well just be better people than the Alethi, and possess a generalized notion of egalitarianism that extends to the battlefield. If, in general, each (Parsh)man is worth just as much as any other, then a society very dedicated to this egalitarianism could hold that each (Parsh)man on the battlefield is equally valuable. Thus, depriving your enemy of the most possible men is the best possible tactic, as they are all equally valuable. It's a bit irrational, in terms of pure battlefield calculus, but people do irrational things to uphold their principles (such as focusing fire on a single man who happens to be wearing bones).

Also, the Parshendi might not really have a proper grasp of the concept of variable worth on the battlefield. A trained heavy infantryman is more valuable than a bridgeman, in terms of training, effectiveness, and cost of replacement. He's also more valuable at any given moment on the battlefield. The Parshendi are apparently rooted in a tribal society without large-scale warfare (as seen from their lack of battle formations and whatnot), so might not really "get" that some people on the battlefield are inherently less valuable than others, and so try to kill the maximum number, which happens to be best brought about by shooting those half-naked people with the bridges.

"Pretty firmly locked down" means that the vast majority of knolwedgable discussion understands world hopping a specific way. It doesn't mean "no one has or will ever use it misleadingly or incorrectly as regards to that general understanding." You yourself are evidence of that possibility, if I may say so. Also, not to disparage anyone but both of those instances are sourced at relatively new members, so aren't exactly the strongest evidence for a general acceptance of world hopping as including movement through space. Either way, feel free to keep using the term your way. I find it unnecessary and misleading, but to each his own.

All I can recall about surface is that the durability of LInes of Forbiddance depends on the surface. We see chalklings moving across grass and human flesh, at the very least, so I think they might be all good once they're created.