Pathfinder

I am not very savy with Reddit and I have clicked the link but I cannot locate that post. Could you type it out, or explain how to find it? I would love to read it. Thank you!

I see jasnah stepping back once elhokars baby becomes old enough to rule. That will probably be by the end of the stormlight series. Then she can go explore the cosmere. Sanderson said jasnah is not cosmere aware yet, but she can catch up fast

Thank you! Theoretically I think you could make a tactical rpg for any of the novels, I just felt thematically it would fit best with Stormlight. Radiants are a military organization. The plot is about a never ending war. So I thought a war simulator would fit best. RTS is probably the way it would go, but I feel a tactical rpg would handle the "leveling up" of the oath progression, and allow (in my opinion) a greater range of use in the powers. You do make a lot of interesting points about mistborn being a tactical rpg, but then again I love the genre, so I wouldn't mind if all the books ended up that way lol

Well my first joke response is whoever can keep up with the highstorm wins lol. Anyone left behind and killed from afar would run out of stormlight and die. Now having said that, my serious response is if it is between two radiants of the same oath level, I think one can still be killed. It took a whole lot of stormlight for Kaladin to heal from the shardblade wound on his arm. Enough that since then he tries to avoid getting hit by shardblades as he is concerned he wouldn't have enough to heal it in the heat of battle. The immediate response to this would be "well in a highstorm the radiant would have unlimited stormlight to heal the wound". Which is very true, but I think a large part of that is where specifically is hit. I think if one radiant was able to dig his or her shard blade into the other radiant's head and keep it there, could result in the death of the radiant even if they are both in highstorms. The big things being the weapon being a shardblade, the wound being to the head, and the blade staying in the head till the "self" has fully left the body. At least that is what I think happens.

And the evidence you put forward to back your theory, I do not feel lends it to be believable. All I am saying is your theory does not work for me. I feel based on what I have read in the books, your theory does not apply. The next book may show otherwise. So again, Wish you luck with your theory and for myself at least, guess RAFO!

Please finish the whole quote.

Can you please write specifically what she says?

Brandon makes a point to say only radiant soulcasters can do so. For me the WoB states the highstorm to account for large volumes of stormlight (as Calderis elaborated on). It states the soulcasting can be done directly from stormlight, no gems required. So to me that WoB is pretty open and shut. But I respect you disagree, and to each their own.

Please provide the page number, and or type out the quote you are referring to. As Calderis pointed out, that is not how that scene played out. I do not see how. What about that statement of Calderis says that similarity is important? Please explain it to me. By me stating what you wrote is a theory is not meant to be derogatory. Gravity is a theory. It is well substantiated, and tested, but by definition it is a theory. So theory is not a bad word. Now having said that, explaining phenomena with evidence and reason, still does require evidence. I have not seen any from you that causes me to agree with your theory. Please refer to my earlier post regarding Kaza. An individual of great power soulcasted a large amount of air into those stone pillars. Kaza was offering the stone pillars the memory of when they were air prior to that soulcasting. It would be a different matter if that same scene occurred, but those stone pillars were naturally occurring or were build out of natural stone. But they aren't. They were soulcasted to be rock. I do not see any other soulcasting scene across all three books where it is ever mentioned that stone is easier to soulcast to air. The reason why does not even have to be explicitly stated in the novels or WoB. All that would be required is Jasnah saying "hey Shallan, soulcasting stone to air is especially easy." But she doesn't. She states different ways to approach convincing the material to change, but nothing about a material being easier to change into a particular other material. She also never mentions changing one material to a material "less" like it, is harder. So again I ask, please provide quotes or WoB to where you read this, because if I missed something, I would love to learn something new. Otherwise based on all the information I have read, and all the evidence I have reviewed, I disagree with you. Best of luck with your theory and I guess RAFO!

All I am asking is a quote or WoB that supports what you are stating. For instance I dont recall reading anywhere that familiarity matters. If you could provide a quote or WoB to show this, I would appreciate it because I would have learned something new. We know that how people see any object matters to how it views itself. A boat does not see itself as a plank, as shown with the winds pleasure (I believe that is the name) when shallan soulcasts it. There is an example/quote from the book. Wood was trees and trees drink water. Shallan turned the boat to water. Yet no mention of that making things easier. The stone has been seen as stone by people long enough that it sees itself as stone. If the various stages of ecology mattered then stone could be transformed into anything easily. It could be transformed into water because crem is carried in the water before it settled out, so it would see itself as liquid. It would be easily changed into organics because of the bacteria present in it during the high storm. High storms also have lightning in them so fire should be easy too. How about oil? The building blocks of oil is there too. So stone should be the easiest thing to soulcast into anything by that premise. So if that was the case, I would imagine that would be something jasnah would mention to shallan. I would imagine it would be something mentioned in WoB. So I figured you had examples. Since I dont recall that mentioned anywhere, I am personally inclined to disagree. If you could show me where it is mentioned or shown then I would be happy to change my mind. Otherwise I see no point in continuing. I wish you luck with your theory!

So the WoB i posted recently in this thread shows that radiants can soulcast whatever essence they want from stormlight directly, regardless gemstones. the fabrial users are the only ones limited by the stones. There is another WoB where Brandon comments that the stones breaking when Jasnah soulcasts in front of Shallan is Jasnah fooling Shallan. Finally we see Jasnah soulcasting multiple times in succession multiple types of essences prior to Dalinar uniting the realms, without needing to switch between gemstones. So the gemstones seems to be a limitation for the fabrials alone. As to conservation of mass, there was another WoB recent that I have posted below: Sorana (paraphrased) Is Soulcasting volume- or mass-preserving? Brandon (paraphrased) It's mass-preserving, but there are some strange things going on and that's why we don't get as much explosions as we should. You can see a bit of what is going when Jasnah Soulcasts air, there are some little reactions, but not as strong as you ought to get Regarding gunpowder, theres a WoB for that too! lol Phantine At the risk of getting too technical, is there anything besides lack of knowledge preventing a soulcaster from turning some rocks into a bunch of plutonium and exploding? I know you've got some rules attached to time bubbles to avoid those going nuclear so I wouldn't be surprised if there was something or another. Brandon Sanderson Well, Soulcasting isn't fission or fusion. It's a spiritual transformation process, not a physical one, and so you don't have to worry about some of these issues. There IS historical precedent of accidentally setting off fission reactions in the cosmere using the magic, but that was a different process. Soulcasting is actually pretty safe. (Well, on a grand scale.) You could end up irradiating yourself, though, which wouldn't be very fun. If you know what you were doing, making plutonium or uranium on Roshar wouldn't be difficult. The problem is more a matter of knowledge, and room for scientific exploration. They're unlikely to make atom bombs for the same reason they haven't made gunpowder. Once they figure out that some substances are important, they can learn to make them with Soulcasting (assuming they have Radiants) but some substances just don't occur naturally--so discovering them in the first place is difficult, and would require more modern scientific process. Phantine Okay, just to clarify here (since I'm not sure how up you are on early nuke designs) A big enough chunk of uranium or plutonium will explode regardless of whether it's in a bomb or not. Early bomb designs just slammed two smaller chunks together so they'd be one big chunk. For plutonium 'big enough' is about 35 pounds in one place - a chunk somewhere between the size of baseball and volleyball. If I understand properly, people can soulcast from the cognitive realm into the physical, which implies once we get into a more modern stormlight setting soulcasters will make nuclear submarines look like small potatoes. Brandon Sanderson Slamming two chunks together so they became one big chunk seems an understatement, from what I remember. I'm under the impression that you had to use a great deal of explosive force to ram them together in order to set off a viable fission reaction. Doesn't it have to be compressed somewhat in order to react with itself? I'll admit, it's been a long time since I've looked at this, but I remember glancing it over, and deciding that you'd need more than just soulcasting to get it to happen. Though it's not outside of reason that a soulcaster could learn to create super-dense plutonium. The problem is one of understanding, however. Just like it's totally possible that we, with our current technology, could figure out some huge breakthrough in science allowing FTL or other incredible discoveries. But we don't have the understanding to pull it off yet. In a modern setting, however, a lot of these complaints go out the window. Let's just say that this isn't the only reason a modern society that can instantly transmute one substance to another is potentially a very interesting place. Phantine You're totally right that everyone currently uses an 'implosion' style compression design. It's a lot more bang for your buck, and you need less radioactive material to work with. They're also a lot safer, because just sitting around they're well below critical mass - without the power-boosting tricks they basically can't go off. The old "nobody uses these anymore" designs were 'Gun-Type'. Very simple - shoot a uranium bullet into the center of a uranium ring (or vice versa). Inefficient as heck (the Hiroshima bomb only fissioned 1.4% of its uranium), but also super simple to put together. Despite being simple to build, gun-types were also super unsafe relative to modern implosion devices (among other worries, dropping a gun-type device into the ocean could potentially set it off because of how neutrons react with water). Also, getting the timing perfect on the fissile 'bullet' was a problem, so practically speaking it could only be done with uranium. After WWII, the only use the US ever had for gun-types was in bunker busters and nuclear artillery (because of course that was a good idea). Darn, that post turned out longer than I expected it to. Anyway, I'm looking forward to see you make something really cool out of a post-scarcity transmutropolis setting (especially since the liespren would be in charge of nuclear treaties), and also my roommate just pointed out all the laying out of nuclear bomb details is pointless if they could just make antimatter instead. D'oh. Brandon Sanderson This is useful information for me, but my gut says that Rosharans couldn't get this working with their current tech level. That said, the REAL issue (as you mentioned in your original question) is knowledge, not feasibility. They'd have to know how to make the right kind of Uranium or Plutonium--and would need to be able to get this across to a soulcaster in a way that works, then THEY would need to get this across to spren. Cross that hurdle, and I suppose it's not at all implausible to imagine Alethi during Dalinar's era with nukes. I suspect the right kind of fabrial could make a trigger device to match ring and bullet at the right time. Depends on how quickly it needs to be going, though.

And my point is it was only because the stone had been soulcasted originally. That it was not naturally rock to begin with. So any luck on that quote or WoB? Otherwise agree to disagree. Won't bother to continue unless you post a quote or WoB. Wish you luck with your theory!

I'm sorry, you misunderstood my point. The pillars were soulcasted. She was just attempting to return them to what they were before. They never were stone to begin with before the transformation. Quote is included in my last post.

Kaza was able to do what she did because she reasoned those pillars were air already soulcasted into into stone. She was offering to return it to what it once was. So those pillars were not made of naturally occurring stone worked into pillars sticking out of the water. She even says she cannot return it to air, but smoke would be close and it could feel free again. One moment, and I will update my post with the quote Oathbringer page 561 "The stone did not wish to change. It was content with its long slumber in the ocean. But... yes, yes, it remembered. It had once been air, until someone had locked it into this shape. She could not make it air again; her Soulcaster had only one mode, not the full three. She did not know why. Smoke, she whispered to the stone. Freedom in the air. Remember? She tempted it, picking at its memories of dancing free."

I meant this part: "stone on Roshar might have some knowledge of what it is like to be air because they come from highstorms in the form of crem. Turning rock into smoke therefore seems fairly easy." Jasnah talks extensively about how to soulcast particular essences, but I do not recall her ever saying that, nor a WoB stating that either. So if you could provide a quote, or WoB that says that, that would be great. Thanks!

Could you provide a quote from the book or a WoB that says that? Always love to learn something new.

New WoB that answers whether or not a radiant soulcaster can soulcast directly from stormlight and what essences: The Forumlurker (paraphrased) If a Radiant tried to Soulcast directly with the Stormlight from the Highstorm, what essences could they create? Brandon (paraphrased) They could basically do whatever they want. There wouldn't be any limitations, but only for Radiant Soulcasters.

New WoB that answers whether or not a radiant soulcaster can soulcast directly from stormlight and what essences: The Forumlurker (paraphrased) If a Radiant tried to Soulcast directly with the Stormlight from the Highstorm, what essences could they create? Brandon (paraphrased) They could basically do whatever they want. There wouldn't be any limitations, but only for Radiant Soulcasters.

New WoB that answers whether or not a radiant soulcaster can soulcast directly from stormlight and what essences: The Forumlurker (paraphrased) If a Radiant tried to Soulcast directly with the Stormlight from the Highstorm, what essences could they create? Brandon (paraphrased) They could basically do whatever they want. There wouldn't be any limitations, but only for Radiant Soulcasters.

I believe the theory stated that the radiants killing the spren was to prevent them from from ending the bond and going to Odium's side. If I recall correctly there is a WoB that ending the bond without killing the spren requires both the knight and the spren to agree to do so, and after a certain oath even that becomes difficult/impossible. So I do not think the spren could have just said "hey we don't like you, i'm not bonding you anymore" and walk away fine. That said, my purpose of posting the theory was more for the idea that reviving Maya may not end out beneficial to Adolin or the general war effort. Not saying things won't ultimately work out for Adolin, but we were all pretty much expecting a certain outcome from Sadeas's death regarding Adolin and we got something completely different. I was fine with how that ultimately resolved. Some disliked it. All I am saying is it could be an interesting heel toe if the revival ended up going ways we haven't even thought of yet. I respect your theory and wish you luck with it! Overlord Jebus Can a spren willingly break their bond anytime between the First and Fifth Oath, with their Radiant? Brandon Sanderson Yes, this is possible-- Overlord Jebus Essentially committing suicide isn't it though-- Brandon Sanderson I just ascribe to that question-- A spren could at any point break it. Can they break it safely? That's a different question. Overlord Jebus Can they break it safely? *laughs* Brandon Sanderson There are methods in place where it can be stopped. So yes it can be done. But once you've started into this, once you've chosen on both sides, it's a dangerous process. But yes it can be done, and it can be done safely. (looking for the one that says after a certain point you cannot. will add when i find it) edit: cannot find the second one at this time and unfortunately I do not have the time to dig, so I will operate on the premise that I recalled incorrectly until such time as I am able to locate it.

That's great and I totally respect your opinion and your right to hold it. Though I will point out my original post on that theory regarding the spren betrayal was not directed at you nor was its intention to change your mind/convince you because as you said we both have already spoken on how we disagree on what is narratively interesting. Now having said that, I think we can agree Sanderson's books are not "my little pony". The power of friendship didn't stop the friends of kaladin in the parsh from killing and being killed by the friends of kaladin in the city guard. The power of friendship didnt cause kaladin to stop moash from killing elhokar. The power of friendship didnt stop sadeas from betraying dalinar at the tower. The power of friendship didnt stop amaram from killing kaladins troops and didnt stop amaram from siding with odium. And the power of friendship didnt stop adolins friends from joining up for the four vs one duel (which I may point out was negative for adolin and everyone including you I believe love that scene). So to me there have been plenty of moments not positive for the characters that have made for great narrative moments. As I said, i dont believe the theory myself, but i thought it interesting enough of a thought to share it. Who knows? Maybe things go badly regarding reviving maya subverting our expectations, but that results in the conflict calyx is looking for for adolin that results in adolin bonding a spren (as calyx said, not talking about having to be broken to bond. Talking about over coming something to make the success feel more poignant). Not trying to change anyone's mind. Just giving people something to think on.

No problemo. Like I said I didn't prescribe to that theory either, but thought it was worth mentioning as something to think on. The usual direction of the theories for reviving Maya tend to be positive, as in it is a good thing for Adolin, Maya, and others. I thought it was an interesting thought if it was actually a negative or a bad thing. Just showing various views.

I read a little while back a theory that the spren were killed during the Recreance because the spren found out about the humans being the real voidbringers, and decided to take sides with Odium. The radiants then killed their spren to prevent them from siding with the enemy. Personally I think that theory is highly unlikely, but it would certainly paint Adolin potentially reviving Maya in a much darker light. Adolin would be restoring an ally to Odium, and also potentially opening the flood gates to the other spren to be restored and side with Odium. I personally do not believe this theory, but thought it was an interesting thought.

Lol, I think that would depend on how you theorize what would happen if Maya is revived. If you think it is from forming a bond with Adolin, then theoretically he would be bonded when the sword "vanishes" and appear right next to him. Theoretically yes, though if it theoretically works that way, then maya would end up in the inland sea that is the cognitive realm. Though the bond helps the spren transition to the physical so would Maya automatically transition as result, or would need to be reached all depends on what you believe. Basically everything right now is theoretical concerning Maya so the answer would be whatever you theoretically believe would happen. Personally I theoretically believe that Adolin is strengthening his connection to Maya like Dalinar did with oathbringer (he felt urging from oathbringer when he fought the chasmfiend, and it consciously hates him less due to his oaths that he has kept). I think in order to restore the bond in full, a large infusion of investiture coupled with Dalinar's bondsmith's entire schtick being bonds, would be necessary to rebuild what was ripped out of Maya to restore the bond.

I will never stop saying this, even as I realize this will never happen, but I think the best genre for the Stormlight Archive game would be a strategy RPG like Fire Emblem. Stormlight is about a war. In strategy RPGs you get troops that have special abilities very similar to the radiants. Very few tweaks would be required. Pegasai knights would be wind runners (high movement speed flying units). Wyvern knights would be skybreakers (again high movement speed flying units, with tomes counting as division). Soulcasting could be accomplished like dragon veins in Fates, and transportation could be accomplished like teleportation tiles. Even some new mechanics from the latest fire emblem soon to be released could apply. Gambits have a certain number of uses per battle. Same could apply to the surges to provide balancing. Now having said all that, sadly this will never happen. Strategy RPGs have been gaining a lot of popularity lately (thankfully), but still are a very niche genre in gaming. But one can still dream.