killersquirrel59

Well the bomb disposal people couldn't stand outside and work on the bomb inside since it has been confirmed that for people if any part of them crosses the boundary they are inside the bubble. However it would give them a huge amount of time to study the bomb from the outside, gather exactly the correct tools and come up with the perfect plan before actually sending someone in to do the disarming.

Huh, I never pictured Herdazians as Hispanic but on reflection it seems to work. I had actually pictured Greek or other Mediterranean cultures for exactly the same reasons (huge families, lots of cousins, close knit, generally jovial even in terrible situations), so I associated Chouta with gyros. However you're definitely right. Most cultures at some point or another have come up with some variation on meat and sauce inside something vaguely bread-like. It's not a specific dish.

I'd definitely get at least a T-Shirt. How about novelty Inquisitor spectacles? Looks like spike heads in the front?

I like the gateway for power idea. Maybe some way to combine Aon Tia with Aon Rao to transfer power from Elantris across distances.

I think that Lirin is alive technically but will only live long enough to have a tearful last words scene with Kaladin and die in his arms. I picture Lirin sticking so strongly to his nonviolence pact that he tried to talk to the Voidbringers and offer to heal them before getting batted aside into a gutter where he sobbed away the rest of the battle watching the people he cared about get slaughtered. Alternatively...

It's notable that Feruchemical iron does not affect mass it affects weight. What is more, it is notably affecting the gravitational pull on you. Therefore conservation of momentum does not play as big a part as it might appear.

White all the way. Logic will always win out over needless passion. Emotions get in the way. And it would totally work to have an openly evil group. A great example was seen in Legend of the 5 Rings. The various clans were all given specific commands by the Emperor when they were established. The command to the Scorpion clan was to be villains. They serve a vital role in the Empire and it works brilliantly.

Definitely don't just skip ahead. You will be hopelessly lost. I completely understand the sentiment however. It took me 6 tries to get through the series. The final time I just skipped the last part of book 8 which was where I was getting hung up (it's 5 chapters of Rand describing a forest with a bit of battle put in the middle). In general I love Robert Jordan's writing, but his descriptions go WAY too much. He is rather fond of using 5 pages when 5 sentences will do just fine. I'd suggest either trying the audiobooks (this worked better for me) or when he starts describing scenery just skipping to the next place you see someone talking, often several pages ahead. In any case, it is well worth getting through the Jordan descriptive passages to get to Sanderson's books. The ending is more epic than I think any of us imagined it would be.

Granted. You get a clock. I wish for a Ryshadium to choose me as its rider.

An interesting possibility would be if the Shards couldn't really touch the afterlife themselves because it is something greater, requiring a complete Adonalsium to function properly. If that were the case the Shattering of Adonalsium itself could be a correlation to the broken afterlife you posit here.

Not sure how well something like that would work. Aon Rao is a power amplifier, but it itself would also grow weaker the further you got from the giant Aon Rao that is Elantris. I suppose it would depend on the rate of power loss, in particular whether the loss is linear, exponential, quadratic, or logarithmic. By the same principle we have no idea how the power amplification of Aon Rao works and on what scale it boosts other Aons. We just don't have anywhere near enough information to know how useful an Aon Rao would work in such a situation.

I think this is covered in a WoB somewhere noting that he has the potential to be but that for the moment he is still getting used to the fact that they are opposed and is spending a lot of his energy dealing with the opposing imperatives of Preservation and Ruin. In time he could become far more powerful though once he learns to harness their power more efficiently.

I really like the idea of sanity. I'd never thought about that on a sliding scale, but there are a number of cool applications.

Gravitron. That was the other big one I was forgetting. The Gauss rifle is...weird. But it goes on the list.

Granted. You are now a small piece of wood stuck in Harmony's toe. I wish I was a Shardholder.

I'm preparing to run a game set in the world of Steelheart. I think I can do it pretty well using the Hero System. I'm looking for a bit of help building the world though. In particular I'd like some help coming up with a list of the advanced tech mentioned and what the specifications are. I'm looking for the actual tech, not the Gifts from Prof like the Tensers or other Transference Epics (though things that need someone like Conflux to power them are good). The ones I remember off the top of my head are as follows: Imagers (3D imaging but not real holograms based on 6 screens and perspective) Power armour/mechs used by Enforcement Mobiles (seem to be more than just mobile phones, at the very least seem to have the computing power of modern smart phones). What else is mentioned? I'd rather not have to do a full read through just looking for tech if I don't have to. Trying to get a sense of the general tech level.

I like this idea but I don't know if I'm entirely convinced. 4 dimensional physics doesn't really cover Realmatic theory too well.

Granted but you are now driving on a completely closed system with no exits like a hotwheels track. I wish for the ability to time travel forwards and backwards at will.

Well we know from Marsh's segment when he was going to spike Penrod that the size of the spike doesn't matter at all other than for its ability to physically pierce the flesh. He outright says it. However, that is assuming a whole spike made to be that size. It might be a different thing if a spike was made and then divided. Thinking about it, it would have to be, otherwise Hemalurgy would hardly be end-negative. If I can make one Allomancer's power into power for 2, 4 or 8 more Allomancers that's certainly not end-negative. So what do we think based on some of the higher Realmatic implications of Hemalurgy? What would be the effects of dividing a spike? Would the power all concentrate into one remaining piece? Would both pieces be invested but to a lesser degree? Would there be power lost? We know it's possible to divide a spike and have at least one piece of it remain Hemalurgically charged (Wax's earring) though that might also have something to do with Sazed's influence and his changes to Hemalurgy.

That's probably related. I'm just hoping we can get a discussion going on some ideas for what those early clues that Brandon likes to drop might be. Maybe we get lucky and someone will notice something that ends up being the next "on his arms". That person would earn serious bragging rights.

Yeah but since all Feruchemical traits are internal wouldn't that just turn you into a black hole, thus destroying you? I don't think even a Gold Compounder could survive that.

Even looking at each Epic's powers individually they make no sense with the information we have. They seem completely random. The ability to turn things to steel combined with invincibility and flight? Nightwielder makes a little more sense. At least his are all darkness themed. All I'm saying is that I think there's another piece of the puzzle hidden somewhere that we're missing. I trust an author this amazing to wrap it all up neatly with something that's going to make us all slam down the third book and rush back to the bookshelf to grab Steelheart again to look back at the seemingly innocuous thing buried somewhere that ties it all together. Just seeing if we can guess what that innocuous little thing is early.

I really like this idea. It falls pretty closely in line with some theorycrafting I've been doing lately. I've been doing some experimentation (pre-theorycrafting) of trying to imagine Calamity as a Shard. I know that Steelheart is not Cosmere, but thinking of it that way provides a useful framework. Given the traits that are exemplified by the most powerful of Epics, I concluded to look at Calamity as the Shard Vanity. Since Shards usually give their Investiture to those who most exemplify their traits in some way (most obvious on Sel and Roshar) I started looking at the personality traits of the Epics and the way their powers manifested. Think about the known Epics. Each of them has a power or powers that can be extremely flashy and obvious (even if they aren't always used that way, none of them are notably subtle with the possible exception of Fortuity). Combining that with the personality traits of those who we've seen, all of them have a need to do something grand. Think about Deathpoint's speech in the bank in the prologue. Why is he going to rob a bank? He doesn't need the money. He does it because he can. He needs to show off. This is a trait exemplified by pretty much every epic out there: an inherent need to preen and show how powerful they are.

David does have a coldness to him. The events in that bank seriously changed him (in a pre-Calamity world we'd probably call it a form of PTSD). However I don't think it's necessarily wrong or unreal that he is that way. Many people react to trauma differently and the reaction of either obsession with the event or some piece thereof (his obsessive notation and hatred of Epics, particularly Steelheart) and/or emotional disconnect is entirely appropriate and actually made the character feel more real to me.

As we all know, Brandon is very hardline on his magic systems having set and logical rules. Even if those rules are not directly tied into real-world physics, they are always internally consistent. This is notably absent in Steelheart. Epic powers are all over the place and at least from the evidence in the first book make very little logical sense. So far the only hard and fast rule appears to be that all Epics must have a weakness. Admittedly, hard and fast understandable rules fit rather poorly into the superhero genre, where it's generally accepted that heroes randomly pull new powers out of their butts at predictable intervals or as plot demands (especially DC). However, I can't see Sanderson abandoning all three of his laws of magic so blatantly. First Law of Magic: Yet in Steelheart we have very little understanding of the system. Different Epics each have very different and seemingly illogical and unconnected powers. Yet the problems of the Reckoners are regularly solved by the imbuing from Prof, and the end victory is gained by exploiting the moment of insight on Steelheart's weakness. Second Law of Magic: This one appears to be violated all over the place in this book. All Epics have a weakness but their powers far outstrip it in scope. Steelheart is completely invincible AND can turn things to steel AND can fly AND etc. And his one weakness is so esoteric and difficult to fathom that it took 10 years for anyone to figure it out and even then is all but impossible to exploit. Nightwielder is vulnerable to something that his own power can make go away completely. Third Law of Magic: This one he at least makes a nod to following. He keeps the story fairly tight around a set group of Epics without bringing in a whole supporting cast with new powers. And yet even that cast pulls new things out of nowhere like the new "tech" wielded by the Reckoners to solve whatever their problem happens to be. All this is not meant to come down on Brandon. I have far more faith in him and his mighty Shardpen than that. I post this to begin the process of theorycrafting and state that the first book gave a deeply mistaken conceptual view of the world and how the powers work. I'm willing to bet that there is a system to the madness and more of a hidden weakness and limitation to Epics than we have seen. So I put it to the obsessive people of the 17th Shard to see what we already know and what possibilities could be compiled. I highly suspect that it has something to do with the true nature of Calamity, and possibly to do with who these people were before they became Epics which is notably glossed over.