Kurkistan

Just go all Daredevil on it, then. Hyper-awareness of relative spatial location based on sounds, vibrations, etc. Once again, a study of how the blind perceive and interact with the world would not be amiss.

If you want to look into it, I'm sure there's some stuff on the internet about the dreams the blind have. This was at the top when I googled. Recall that Augers appear to do more than just "see" when they burn gold: they also seem to get very strong impressions of character, disposition, emotions, etc.

No, they're not useless. They can still "see" the lines, just like Inquisitors (though not necessarily as well, unless they get all savanty or the like).

He most likely will not, sorry. He has a fairly full explanation of why here.

Why would it need to be a square foot? Go Batman on it and have a fairly small plate just where your center of mass is. Also, I don't think you'd need a full 4 inches to stop a bullet: unless I mis-remember, a specific thickness wasn't mentioned in AoL, so I think Phantom is just exaggerating for effect.

By the point Vin was using her earring as a weapon, she had absorbed the mists at least once while fighting TLR and had taken up the power of the Well. She had plenty of chances to snag some extra power. Personally, I think the earring was simply small and of weak Investiture: that, combined with Vin's naturally high power, probably allows her to still Push/Pull it.

We know from Nepene's question that how others view them "is a factor," so I would hazard that the other factor manifests as some amount of leeway on how exactly they express such a broad Form. We paint the Olympians as of differing ages, but that does not change their underlying similarities.

Huh. I hadn't seen that annotation. Thanks. I suppose that leaves my off-the-cuff theory a bit more exposed, though I still think it's plausible, and even likely, just from a gut level.

Fair enough, it's mostly just an aside I thought of in the moment. It feels right to me, though. As I discussed in the grand debate on Denth's lineage, I think it likely that Vasher can only really switch between "Returned" and "not-Returned": otherwise he or Denth could have disguised themselves. It seems odd that he should have careful control over exactly what kind of Returned he'd be. Possible, but odd.

Hello all. Since my previous thread, while not getting many objections, was universally hailed as the single most dense and unreadable thing ever, and a bit of new information has come to light, I've decided to try a bit of a simplification/reboot. I'll leave off all my crazy talk about the minutia of Forging (see the original thread for that) and just talk about the bare bones of the matter with some clearly marked digressions at the end to analyse how it applies to Spren, Returned, and Forging, as well as glossing over some other possible uses for a "Form" theory of Realmatics. Evidence: We've got various quotes pointing us in this direction: Brandon's comment on "poopspren" opens up the possibility of a bit more Cognitive-Spiritual fuzziness than I've been talking about up until now, but I would hazard that the Cognitive versions of Forms are akin to "working copies" that serve as an intermediary between "ideal" Spiritual Forms and the amalgamation of Cognitive perceptions: the Cognitive version can get messy and be reactive, with the initial version based on and tied to the pure Spiritual Form and the end results (after being gnawed on by a few thousand people's brains) percolating up to the Spiritual--and so providing a mechanism for both changing existing Forms and creating new ones. This is somewhat similar, at least in terms of metaphor, to Sazed's two sets of Copperminds. EDIT 2: Actually, looking at another part of Nepene's question, this is almost certainly how it works. Not sure how I overlooked that before. Basic Theory: Stop me if I get too convoluted. Okay. As you can see in the quotes above, Spren as we know them (visible, interacting Spren, not pseudo-Cognitive aspects) are based on "cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time". As I asked Brandon, this is the same type of thing that lets a window being remade out of new stained glass or a block of gold being adulterated with lead judge the plausibility of its Forgery. It is also the same thing that makes Returned of one era (including Vasher, actually) fat and those of another era athletic (also including Vasher, reinforcing that he accesses an external "Returned" Form rather than just changing his own perceptions). These "Forms," then, are quasi-independent Spiritual entities that come into being as a result of the massed Cognitive perceptions of large numbers of sapient (as in perceiving, not necessarily self-aware) beings. So "Fire," "Wind," "Pain," and "Window" all have Forms because they are abstractions from the specific to the general. I take these truths to be self-evident, given the information we have. Expansion: I hereby spare you an expansion. Look at the original thread if you want to torture yourself, or I'll gladly expand on and/or defend the theory if anyone has questions to ask below. Applications: Forging: As I lay out in far more detail in the other thread I linked to, the "plausibility" of Forgeries seems to depend, to a large extent, on manifold Spiritual connections to appropriate Forms. So whether or not a block of gold would be adulterated with lead, or a set of manacles made out of soap, is dependent on quasi-independent manifestations of social norms. Nepene's question also gave us the fact that more "local" views can also have an affect on a Forgery: thousands of people going "AH! The Emperor is a homunculus!!!!" is just as effective as a Form in this regard, and should work in the same way. Returned and Divine Healing: Looking at Nepene's and my own question, it's clear that the beauty standards of Returned are dependent on some highly external sense of human physical ideals. These standards seems to be externally imposed as well, looking to Nepene's question. Also, as I mentioned when discussing Vasher above, these ideals seem to be actively as well as externally imposed on those who are in "Returned" form, as opposed to being simply internalized at one point and then not updated, though I suppose Vasher could conceivably have intentionally "updated" his Returned appearance. As I mentioned here, I would posit that the healing done by the sacrifice of a Returned's Divine Breath is so much better than normal magical Healing--healing Susebron to have a tongue and the ability to speak, instead of the normal "you heal back to the form of yourself" you see with Forging and Feruchemy--because it accesses some Form of human health, external to the healed and thus not restricted by their Cognitive aspect. Spren: Though I do have an entire thread on the matter, I would like to reiterate that Spren seem to be the purist manifestation of these Forms that we have yet seen. Whether windspren are drawn to the wind or are the wind, their forms seem to be entirely dependent upon both incidental Cognitive perceptions (see: locked flamespren in the interlude) and broader, more universal Forms. General Effects of Forms: It's dawned upon me (oh no) that Forms seem to serve a similar function to the Cognitive Realm. Not Realmatically (though they kind of do that too), but in terms of Brandon being able to write books and magic systems that don't break down under their own weight. Just as the Cognitive stops the world from exploding whenever someone tries to leave a Cadmium bubble and allows Healing without Miles being a mass of tumors, so Forms restrict and guide magic along "common sense" routes on a more meta-scale. The spoiled are just a few thoughts I've had, and are tangential to the theory as a whole. They're probably worth spinning theories off of, if anyone likes my Form theory and wants to expand on it a bit. Wow, that's more than I wanted to have to force you to read. Sorry (again). I would like to stress that a fair amount of this is conjecture; highly educated (*pats own back*) and plausible conjecture, but conjecture nonetheless. I've tried to note--with quotes, links, or "as we all knows"--wherever what I say is canon. EDIT: Nvm, turns out I'm right in a lot of ways. That's nice.

It could also be the case that anger-spren have several forms for the same people, much like Windspren show up as ribbons, blowing leaves, etc. All representations of wind, in one way or another, just as lightning and boiling blood are both fair representations of anger. We're fairly sure it's not Jung in this case, Phil. Brandon usually restricts Jungian stuff to talking about the Parshendi. Look more at Plato and "cognitive ideals or concepts which have taken on literal personification over time."

Oracles could potentially be super-awesome-ninjas, observing their own future actions and adapting accordingly, btw. There is WoB on Smokers protecting others from emotional allomancy: Source There's no need to be so hostile to theorizing, either. We haven't seen any Smoker's doing anything or much interest in them in the series, so it falls mostly to us to think of what they can do.

I can see where you're coming from now. I'm still not sure, though. A single entity once held all the Shards, so I doubt that Ruin and Preservation are unique in being "mergeable." They might be particularly complimentary, but that doesn't mean that they would necessarily come together. It may be the case that they are just so very complimentary that they do tend to naturally attract each other, though I don't see why Mr. "Kill and splinter" should be particularly concerned in any case.

Odium needn't have really "gone" to Scadrial. He might have sensed Harmony from far off, or stopped by for 2 minutes, went "oh hateful crap" and run away when he saw Harmony being all Harmonic. No need for him to have gotten his fingers into anything.

That's a good question, which is why I list the bubble growing larger as an assumption. We know that Wayne got a higher compression of time by flaring Bendalloy, so that argues that a d/n (duralumin/nicrosil) powered bubble would simply compress time even more. But it could be that, just as (at least as the somewhat-unreliable on time-bubbles RPG says) time-bubblers have a fair amount of control over the size and compression factor of their bubbles, they can also direct where the extra strength from flaring and "super flaring" metals goes: into size, compression, or a mixture, perhaps. It also seems to me that an d/n flare of bendalloy/chromium really shouldn't increase the compression factor of the bubble. While all other d/n flares burn away their metals in a split second (though not actually instantaneously), a Slider who got d/n flared might have minutes of subjective time where he was inside of a time bubble that should have been flared away in an instant. A time bubble that is no longer being sustained by the burning of metals, it seems, and the duration of which is oddly both too much in- and too much out-of the control of the Slider: he cannot stop burning Bendalloy to cancel the bubble, yet he can still walk to the edge and "pop" it well before the Bendalloy he's already burned has run its course. It seems to me, then, that a d/n burst should reasonably be expected to have an exceptionally short time of effect--similar to a d/n pewter or steel burn lasting a split second, rather than being instantaneous--and more so that this time be short from the perspective of the misting. And so it follows that all the extra energy that is expended by burning your metals in such a short times needs to be directed towards expanding the area of effect of the bubble. Once again, I think I may just be repeating myself with this reasoning, but it's buried in the bowels of some year-old thread and worth repeating. EDIT: Several months later: Actually, I've been a bit foolish. Pulsers can certainly be different from Sliders in this case. Where increasing the "compression factor" for a Slider would give them an unreasonable amount of time to be bubbled after the burst, a Pulser could just as easily have a half second on the inside that takes a year on the outside in a normal bubble as have .5s->month in an unnaturally large bubble. So there's still some ambiguity for them. Not for Sliders, though. Their bubbles need to get bigger.

A good point. I agree that that would work, for certain definitions of "work." That aside, I also agree that I wouldn't really call that FTL, and we know that we get FTL somehow. The "stasis" method you describe would really only be useful for one-way colonization-style trips, not anything more robust or interesting.

Thank you Senor, for having the courtesy to explain. I can see how one might possibly interpret a helmeted visage as occupying the negative space between the dragonwasps.

I don't think it necessary for me to run a campaign. I'll look into playing in one, though. Thanks.

Well, sometimes one may require alcohol in order to recover from theorizing

Nice

Speaking of playing, did anyone ever get around to setting up a forum-based run? I tried to keep an eye out, but I haven't seen anything since the RPG came out.

I kind of meant for you to post it in the FAQ solicitation thread, but thanks. I'll grab these when we set up the main FAQ thread.

The body also uses body to regrow so as not be exploded into twenty pieces, so I think Miles is getting away with a bit of matter-creation here. *TES, Warbreaker Spoilers*

Ah, my mistake. I apologize for not reading your post carefully enough. You are still wrong, though Link So the user is the root cause of Seons' screwiness, meaning that tweaks on the Seon's end probably wouldn't help.