Kurkistan

a) Poison food by accident? I do not recall. And, if I did, I would probably say "sounds like he tuned his soulcaster badly". b> Hypocrisy is fun! Also, the Ardents could make a very clear distinction between the Radiants and surgebinding in general. As far as we can tell from the Nahoden scene, people were forming Nahel bonds well before the Radiants existed; they probably even still formed bonds outside the bounds of the organization during the KR's "reign." The fact that the public, and even some Ardents, might be a bit bad at making these fine distinctions (as your quote and it's context (Kal's father tells him about the Radiants simply being corrupted by power, but not demons) shows) is good enough reason to hide soulcasting. c) You need to be a bit nuanced with "master" and "novice." In a world of secret societies, it would probably be better described as "master f!Soulcaster, journeyman f!Soulcaster, novice f!Soulcaster" and the same stratification for those who could actually surgebind. There's no reason to keep the ability to "tune" soulcasters exclusive to the same group that knows how real soulcasting works. Presumably, novices who can't even tune their f!Soulcasters aren't allowed out into the field until they're trained up. d) Then again, I may well, as you suggest, be completely wrong about everything. I'm on the fence with the plausibility of this theory myself (hence why I'm not espousing it). I started the thread to evaluate the plausibility of this kind of division being the state of affairs. Thank you for challenging me; I would be perfectly happy if you turn out to be right according to the books or even just beat me soundly in terms of arguments right here and now, but I feel the need to play devil's advocate to the current assumption that the Ardents are using real fabrials for all of their soulcasting.

It's 70% of earths, for a 6.87 m/s^2 falling rate. Also, I recall that the wood used is of the somewhat cliched "light, but strong" variety. I could have sworn that Brandon said somewhere that he had to cheat by using wood about as heavy as balsa, but I can't find it.

*Feels oddly happy at Satsuoni's violent disagreement* I didn't write this in the OP because I was feeling ignorant that day, but it has occurred to that f!Soulcasters might need to be manually "tuned" to specific outputs--through manipulation of the patterns of gemstones or even the capturing of different spren. Such a tuning process could be quite involved and difficult, resulting in bland food and unimaginative buildings as most Ardents leave theirs preset to what they need the most. This would also account for the need for all Ardents to train--not in negotiating Shadesmar, then, but in maintaining and manipulating their fabrials. This leaves the secret keep-able, since food could just be a specific, arduously figured out, but preset setting on f!Soulcasters EDIT: @Cheese The Ardents in the interlude know about Shadesmar? Now, granted, I haven't read that interlude in awhile, but I don't recall that in the slightest. I even just did a word search for "Shadesmar" as well as checking both wikis, and I didn't find anything about it. I don't think polls are very appropriate for speculative threads, personally. Maybe if you're just gauging general sentiment--seeing what people already believe--then you can throw in a poll to ask how many people are walking around believing a theory, but not if you're just starting out with a relatively novel (if possibly incredibly wrong) concept.

*Shameless bump* Could someone at least give me a "no, that's stupid" or something? I'm feeling a bit lonely here.

No! I refuse to be 1-in-4! Calculus uses infinite infinitesimal rectangles, and so is functionally identical to any method that throws in triangles for fun. The 0.4% was probably just because of where his computer stopped trying for calc (i.e., "the graphic method"). Equations deliver the same results as graphical methods, only better, more generalizable, and more understandable, so I'm going to put this one in the "Newton did that, only he did it better" camp and call it a 1-for-3 day, thank you very much! ()

There are some threads out there. There's mine (shameless plug), which is slightly outdated but still, I think, relatively sound--if in need of a bit of spit and polish applied to its description of the Cognitive in light of TES. You won't miss much if you skip the "great war of Nepene" sections, since it was mostly the two of us quoting at each other about relatively small-scale matters that only applied to Awakening. Satsuoni posted a reply to my thread (which I really see as more of an expansion, since we don't disagree on much, fundamentally), which died far too young, and could use some love. Other than plugging stuff I'm directly related to, looking into anything discussing the fundamental natures of the shards, spren, Shardblades, Nightblood, or the magic systems in general is probably a good idea.

^The best part about it is that that paper has been cited multiple times.

The problem is twofold: First of all, there is the question of the time and space over which energy is delivered. If I can spend 200 Breath to re-winch 20 ballistae in 0.5s as opposed to 40 men to do it in 10, then Breaths have far greater utility--despite their relative inefficiency--because of how quickly they can deliver the energy where I need it. The same holds for space. Those 20 ballistae can be packed far tighter if I don't need to make room for guys to winch them, and so they can have a greater punch. Second, there is the fact that using Breath can only ever be a help to you; it is ever and must be an advantage. In Warbreaker, someone noted that the one-Breath command could double the size of your army: half humans, half animated corpses powered by Breath from the other half of the army. Those Breaths don't do any real good to the bodies of their original owners, so far as the war effort is concerned, but certainly do good animating Lifeless. The same holds true for more industrial endeavors. Say you want 20 guys to turn a wheel. Those 20 guys could give their 20 Breaths to an Awakener who Commands the wheel to "turn" and, even if that doesn't turn the wheel by itself, the workers can turn it a lot more easily, or they can go and turn another wheel at the same time, doubling the work produced. They can even get their souls back at the end of the workday. So, to reiterate, unlike with Canadian dollars, you do add them together I don't think Breaths by themselves decay, though there's no direct textual evidence (that I know of) either way. The God King's reserve seems appropriately large though, especially if it should have started to level off awhile back as "generations" of Breath started "dying." As far as the mechanisms themselves decaying, you could either recover the Breath from them and reinvest it or you could pull Vasher's trick and encase them in stainless steel or somesuch, to reduce wear. As for the Egyptians, as just a historical note, my understanding is that they had steam toys/mechanisms, but no leap to the concept of "wait a second, this can be employed on a large scale to do useful work." This may have been due to the lack of any reason to need that extra work, but, so far as I'm concerned, more energy is always better.

*Spoilers* ^Brandon has an alarming tendency to kill who he loves, in case you haven't noticed. Vin? Gone. Kelsier? More gone. Lightsong? Heroic sacrifice. Sazed? Personality ripped apart by competing Shards. Brandon has also stated that just because a character is the focus of flashbacks during a book doesn't guarantee that they're alive in it.

As it turns out, the other stormlight wiki is a bit better than us about a few topics. I was thinking of taking a few hours and blatantly stealing all of their cool stuff. What's our policy on that? On a related note, are there any high-level talks going on to partner up with one or more of our sister-wikis? I know there's a decent mistborn one, at least. It would be nice if we could get some of the great guys (and gals) over there, who have a very narrow, but effective focus, to lend some of their time to keeping articles of mutual interest up to date in the Coppermind. P.S. Forgive me if this has been asked before, but I didn't find a similar topic here on the forums.

We do know for a fact that Honorblades are a type of shardblade, though.

More on heights: IIRC, most bridge teams were intentionally made up of men of similar heights, with only our beloved Bridge Four having a wide spread.

Nice find. You can link to specific tweets by hitting either "Expand" or "View Conversation" (it depends, either way it's the option on the far left under a tweet) and then hitting "Details". EDIT: Alternatively, you could just click on the timestamp in the top-right corner of the tweet.

So 1-for-3 so far this week. Not my best run. EDIT: At least I didn't rediscover calculus, though :D/> (I've been waiting for an excuse to link to that particular article for awhile now).

This may just be another instance of me "discovering" a long known fact, but I saw this tweet on Brandon's feed: We already knew that the Letter-writer knew Ati personally and that both s/he and the recipient knew at least Rayse personally, but this gives some hard evidence to our assumptions so far that all the Shardholders were on the same world (Yolen, presumably) and even in the same place at the Shattering.

@Sombrero Perhaps this is simply me forgetting obvious facts again, but I don't think we ever get a definitive answer as to what Forging actually changes. Shai talks about giving the Emperor a new "soul", but we know from Brandon that someones's post-death identity includes their Cognitive aspect, so that doesn't restrict us to the Spiritual. However, the Cognitive realm seems to mainly function as a restriction on what Forging can do, serving as the judge of "plausibility" and seemingly remaining unchanged in the face of Forging. If it were the case that Forging affected the Cognitive, then the formerly-stained-glass window would have "seen itself" as a normal window as soon as Shai first Forged it, with nothing to make the Forging revert now that the Cognitive "judge" has been replaced. However, this is not the case, and we see the window's Cognitive aspect remain unchanged in the face of Shai's Forging, rejecting her attempts to make the window an ordinary one. Also, I was mostly kidding when I suggested that you take a crack at this theory. I barely understand all its permutations at this point, after so long away from it. I feel a bit bad for dragging a poor innocent into the middle of all this. @happyman Thanks for coming to my rescue, happyman. A few comments, though. "Motivation, Execution, Consequence" is just a catchy way of describing the theory; it's not necessarily the best terminology to use when actually discussing it. The way I've modeled it (and with much discussion to be had about it, so this is by no means scripture) is that the Cognitive re-write is powered by color, while Breaths are required to power more and more complex Cognitive aspects. The mere presence of the Breaths themselves does not increase the power of one's Cognitive aspect, it simply enables already "powerful" Cognitive aspects to function. This may well be wrong, though, considering Windrunner's Spiritual Constructs theory and the fact that Syl's ability to "think in the Physical realm" is increased by bonding with Kaladin. But then we have the existence of primarily Cognitive beings, which would seem to contradict the aforementioned theory, so... Nightblood may be changing, actually. He suggests to Vasher that Vasher simply throw him into a room with the God King and, if he's evil, the God King will pick Nightblood up and be killed. "This gave Vasher pause. Colors, he thought. The sword seemed to be getting more subtle each year, though Vasher knew he was just imagining things, projecting. Awakened objects didn't change or grow, they simply were what they were." (pg 507). Given the inadequacy of even Vasher's understanding of BioChromatics, he could be wrong and Nightblood could be (ever so slowly) developing. I hereby formally welcome everyone back to the madhouse, by the way.

^Thanks.

That does ring a bell, now that you mention it. I just wanted to be sure we were starting off on solid ground.

Whenever you have that feeling, just double check to see whether it's due to a thread started by Lightflame .

Plausible enough. Do you have a definitive source on there being exactly three types of Blade, though? All I can think of off the top of my head is the confirmation that honorblades are a type of shardblade. Also, there is the problem that, as far as history has told them, all the Blades and Plate that the Alethi know of were originally the property of the KR, and the KR were presumably given their Blades by Honor. So how could Honor get Odium-Blades into the hands of his men? If they are Odium-Blades, that may indicate that the KR started giving its recruits Odium-Blades won on the field of battle, either with the recruits' knowledge or without. That could give a clue as the cause of the Recreance. If you're in the business of tweaking theories that are along the right lines, might I suggest you take a whack at this one . I haven't had the proper time or state of mind to do an overhaul after TES and its revelations.

First off, forgive me for vagueness/inaccuracy/laughable forgetfulness. It's been near-on two years, as far as I can recall, since I read WoK (I'm waiting to get a fresh read just before SA2 comes out). So I may be off-base on how I remember soulcasters being shown to work. I may also simply be wrong, since we haven't yet learned much about real soulcasters. All that aside: Theory Time. In short, I believe that the "basic" soulcasters that only produce a single essence in an uninspired way are, in fact, the only soulcasters that are actually fabrials. Soulcasting "fabrials" which can transform multiple essences in an unlimited variety of ways, then, are all fakes used by Ardents who have gained Soulcasting powers similar to Shallan and Jasnah's. This would mean that Voidus' "the soulcaster was a fake" theory would be accurate, and that Shallan's soulcaster never worked. It may also mean that the Ghostbloods wanted to assassinate Jasnah as an end in itself, because they knew that she could soulcast on her own, rather than as a means of separating her from her fake soulcaster. We know from Shallan's introduction that "multi-use" soulcasters are very rare, and from Kabsal that most soulcasters work by just pushing a button, essentially. This button-pushing doesn't leave much room for any kind of imaginative process to determine the form of the soulcast-target, and would seem redundant if soulcasting fabrials interacted properly with the minds of their users. The secrecy with which Ardent's carry out soulcasting could also be a clue, although, to be fair, it could just be standard religious ceremony instead of evil plots. One--non-my-theory, but still evil plots related--explanation could be that the Ardents don't want laymen getting any bright ideas about exactly who keep the soulcasters once they see that all you have to do is point and click. If you go along with me to super-crazy-land, though, this explanation stacks on-top of another, deeper level of deceit in that Soulcasting!Ardents don't want someone to steal a batch of soulcasters including at least one of the (fake) uber-soulcasters, only then to not be able to get it the uber-soulcaster to work while the non-fake real fabrials did. On a level of deception which is approximately as deep as the previous, but laterally differentiated, the Soulcasting!Ardents could want to hide the nature of their "fabrials" from junior members of the Ardentia, which would be hard to do if just anyone could wander by and observe, but is quite easy if they could restrict attendance to high-level ceremonies involving fake soulcasters to only high-level Ardents. Since junior Ardents would never see an uber-soulcaster used, they'd have no reason to be suspicious of it not working the same way as their (real) low-level fabrials do. Then again, the above two-paragraphs could be nonsense and senior Ardents could get along fine and dandy, whether or not my theory is right, by just pushing buttons on their soulcasters, either as how they actually work or as a very effective ruse. As I said, we don't have much info on soulcasters at this juncture, and I haven't read the book in awhile, so I would appreciate any thoughts you guys (and gals) might have on the subject.

I've been a fairly large fan of Total War since M2TW, and part of the community over there since about the same time. I'm the same Kurkistan who runs the Guides to the Guides (yes, a very original name, the patent is currently pending). Since I've gone to college, though, I just can't muster the proper time to play.

Well I feel sheepish.

Soulstone may well be Shardicly introduced, and perhaps even Invested somehow, but it's almost certainly not the "rocks that fell from the sky" in that passage. Shai never even implies, let alone says, that that was the origin of using soulstone, or that these rocks that fell from the sky were soulstone. We never get a "soulstone could only be found in meteoric craters, making it unspeakably rare" line, and my reading of the book was such that soulstone seemed to be as rare as ivory or gold, but not as rare as any amount of intact meteoric rock has to be. Perhaps the rocks that fell from the sky were in fact the bodies of Shards, but I doubt they were made of soulstone.

Nice question. I also hadn't recalled that Elokhar saw spren in the mirror. After some reflection, I think I'll have to betray my betrayal of myself. We know for a fact that Syl and the symbolhead spren can choose who they reveal themselves to, as well as how creepily they do it, in the case of the symbolheads. So obviously a Polaroid isn't going to catch Syl. Or will it...? But then we have Rock seeing Syl without her willing it, so she probably more so "mutes" or "turns up" her presence to various people in the normal course of things, but can never just disappear. Elokhar seeing spren in a mirror is very odd, then, given that the perception of Spren doesn't seem to be based on photons of light. Either this non-visual perception is still constrained by some measure of Cognitive reflectivity when it encounters an object with a Mirror aspect or Spren hide/appear using "perception filters," but could be captured by a non-intelligent camera or light sensor.