Kurkistan

Speaking of your collection, Kads, I think I Broke at 512.

I think you might be starting off with an incorrect premise here, hoser. I don't think it fair to assume that someone holding stormlight is immune to other Investiture. Szeth can Lash himself after all. *Mistborn Spoilers* That could be a special case, though, since he's acting on himself. Instead, let's look to the dozens of hapless soldiers he's Lashed in the past. We know that the "base" Investiture held by all humans is enough to ward off Allomantic iron/Allomantic steel, yet the Investiture of these victims is of zero benefit to them for Szeth's Lashings. I'd wager, then, that a person's Investiture is only helpful to them in warding off "internal" alterations, not the surface-level ones of their interactions with other things/forces. Shardplate, under this model, is immune to Szeth's Lashings because that stuff is made of Investiture, for all intents and purposes. I don't think, then, that simply holding a chip's worth of stormlight will suddenly make a Surgebinders immune to the Lashings. Maybe if they hold a substantial amount, and maybe it gets harder as they hold more and more stormlight, but not simply as an on/off. Alternatively, no amount of stormlight will ever help a Surgebinder be immune to a Full Lashing. I, myself, doubt that Szeth's own Lashings are somehow "special" to him: he doesn't control or interact with them after their initial creation. That suggests no immunity for any Surgebinder ever, and so it would seem that the extra Investiture from stormlight is wholly "internal" to it's holder. So it might be harder for TLR to stomach-Push you, but not for Szeth's to Lash you. This also reserves a more important role for Plate, since a KR would have an interest in not being affected by hostile Surgebinding. EDIT: NINJA! As to glue: So far as I know, glue works by actually creating new chemical bonds, so it's a bit more involved than simple friction.

Forgive me if I'm simply recalling things wrong, but my understanding is that Full Lashings require the objects to touch before sticking them together. They don't suddenly pull objects together from afar, but instead keep them together once they make contactSzeth "paints" a Full Lashing onto one surface, then brings it into contact with another in order to bind them together.

Yes, but in the case of vacuum the things aren't really "bound". I refer you to Shardlet's point that two Full-Lashed objects would not stick together in vacuum, which I find to be appropriate given that it's supposed to be atmospheric pressure that we're dealing with. Whereas string and glue don't depend on strictly defined external conditions to function in a "binding" capacity, vacuum binding things together relies on an atmosphere to do all the hard work.

This whole "science" thing has not historically been my friend, but I very much like this. Simplified things neatly, and perhaps we could even explain away "bindspren " as "vacuumspren", assuming that such spren need to have some real relation to that which they are associated with beyond mere perceptions.

Ah, my mistake then. I had thought that you were trying to distinguish between "magical" and non-magical racial traits. *Mistborn Spoilers* So, for instance, the Kandra being able to change their bodies is a non-magical racial trait, while the benefits of their Blessings is magical.

Shallan's Memories are somehow "magical", so seems to require Investiture, fyi. Source:

<tangent>Theory: Szeth is not using an Honorblade. I find the mass acceptance of that theory a bit silly, I must say. </tangent>

Isn't it glorious! If you really want tangents, look up "Shardblades and Hemalurgic Decay". In our defense, the OP was asked and answered before the tangents kicked in: It is (heavily implied to be) the same book, and as to the author we know that Marsh didn't write it and just about everyone agrees that it sounds like Spook.

Sorry, I was too broad with my terminology. By "physical world", I had meant to encompass the nature of the entire universe. I used entirely the wrong word to spell that out, though. My apologies for the confusion. Kant's views hinge on the nature of rationality. Those of others hinge on sensation, or sentience, or... Suffice it to say, several philosophies care very very little about the nature of the universe insofar as it does not affect that which they do care about. Assuming (rather fairly, I'd say) that people in the cosmere are rational, then, Kant would not allow anything else to affect his judgement of their moral obligations. So no, the physical world conceivably being different in other possible worlds does not logically entail that morality could be different in other possible worlds. Kant would tell you that a world without rationality is a world without morality, not one with a "different" morality. Yeah, that was nice.

It was "purple", but fRR was a bit unclear...

That's the corresponding polestone for the Shallash. Also, the glyph on the surgebinding table is reddish-purple too.

Garnet/the Lightweaver glyph is kind of a purplish-red on the chart.

And since its binding is garnet-colored and Lightweavers was a potential name for WoR...

Be aware that your position is a position, and a non-trivial claim. Kant, for one, would slap you upside the head for saying that morality could change due to mere changes in the nature of the physical world. Beyond that, many others who allow the nature of morality to supervene on the nature of the physical world would demand a far more rigorous account of why exactly the oddities of the Cosmere allow us to decide that hemalurgy is evil there while perhaps permissible in our world. Beyond that, even if one were to give you that moral questions potentially possess different answers in the cosmere than they do in the real world, there is still a rich discussion to be had about how our own morality would, hypothetically, apply to that world. If you want a better word, perhaps "relative a priori", or "true within its epistemic context", or simply "absolute relative to the cosmere." "Absolute" has strong connotations of applicability to all possible worlds. *Drops mike, stands around awkwardly*

Welcome to the forums and well spotted. Source: (32:30 in video)

To summarize my own position: I agree that those who would say ""I just know that there's no such thing as absolute morality because I know it, and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong'" would not be facilitating conversation. Similarly, though, those who say "I just know that there such thing as absolute morality in the cosmere because Brandon says so" are not adding much either. I discuss hemalurgy as I would if I was a moral agent in a world in which it were possible, as do most of us, I think. I find very little of interest in a discussion based on interpreting Brandon's beliefs. Talk of "evidence" is quite nearly meaningless in this context, then, unless that evidence is about the nature of hemalurgy itself. EDIT: To clarify a bit more, the debate about what Brandon believes is of little import to me, and I don't much care to participate in it. EDIT 2: I don't think that absolutism vs. relativism is the proper cleavage to make. I, for one, have not actually stated my own opinions, taking a second-order approach and just trying to moderate everyone else (mostly ). Other valid stances include irrealism about morals (to talk about morality is to talk of falsehoods or ill-conceived notions) and many other stances; for instance, a utilitarian would hold that the ends can justify the means so long as some objective metric of "good" is maximized in the long run. Also, I think both Shardlet and Knight were asserting realist philosophies that concluded with the (situational) morality of hemalurgy, despite them falling into different camps on relativism and absolutism. As such, I think that we might simply have a problem of confusion over what we're even arguing about. We've had two parallel discussions that, sadly, have sometimes spilled into one another without our notice: one about the morality of hemalurgy per se, another about its morality in Brandon's eyes.

Both, king, both. ()

Thanks. It's only taken a year for my constant linking back to this thread to pay off with a necro.

Well, fRR will tell you that you're right about Mi'chelle, at least.

Actually, I don't think there's any need to limit ourselves to the metallic arts here. Hemalurgy is Ruin's "thing," after all. I would think so, yes.

If it makes you feel better, "wax" and "wane" are verbs used to describe the "action" the moon is currently doing. So the moon is "waxing" from the new moon (dark moon) until the full moon, as it gets fuller and fuller. Then it's waning from full->new. The moon a day after the new moon is a "waxing crescent", for instance.

We do know that Preservation intentionally mist-snapped Atium/Malatium mistings instead of Bendalloy/Cadmium. It remains an open question, so far as I can recall, whether that extends to such mistings only arising "naturally" (like with Yomen) because Preservation messed with stuff. Source: P.S. Here's some more relevant quotes, for fun's sake.

No problem.

Oh, I totally agree that a fair number of secondary problems arise when you can't feel or move a limb. It would likely atrophy, though I think still heal on its own when not abused. It's just that "he would never be able to feel or use it again" implies that the soldier in question isn't facing a choice between amputation or death as his arm starts to rot off while still attached to his body. Sure, you'll "never be able to use" a limb that got amputated, and someone with untreated gangrene will "never be able to" do anything ever again if left alone, but the choice of words suggests paralysis. At this point, I'll admit that my opinion on this is mostly as firm as it is because of my gut. I would be thoroughly surprised if "killed" limbs rotted off of their own accord. I feel just about as strongly on this point, just from my reading of the book, as I did about Denth. Side note: I really don't read much of the worldbuilding in the prologue as "Szeth mentioning things": rather, I see it as exposition that happens to be from Szeth's perspective.