eltari

The War of Light and Shadow series by Janny Wurts, first book being Curse of the Mistwraith. Very good epic fantasy, she's just finished the second to last book of the series (I believe it's that close). About the world of Pararvia, where humans are living on the continent Athera, as refugees after humanity destroyed it's space-faring civilization. 500 years before hand townsman instituted a revolt to overthrow Clan rulers, who were magically augmented to survive contact with the native Paravian races, unicorns, Sunchilden, and centaurs, by seven men, the Fellowship of Seven, to uphold the Compact that governs humanity's stay in Athera. With the uprising, the Paravians withdrew from the world such that the Fellowship doesn't even know where they are. The Fo7's hope for their return are two exiled half brothers Lysear and Arithon, who have the elemental ability to harness light and shadow to battle the Mistwrath, a creature that covers the world in Mist.

Allomancy hands down. It's not even close. I could fly. Seriously, I COULD FLY!

Coinshot Bloodmaker. I want to fly and then I want to heal when I fly badly. It's about as close to being Superman as you can get within the rules.

Nice, I like that! That definitely is a better definition since mass is going to be a function of however the feruchemist is using his ironmind. And, Cosmere wide, more readily adaptable to the individual system. WRT the coefficient, I was treating it more like the coefficient of friction. Changes depending on numerous factors. Hell, even friction is broken up into static and kinetic. Though, it'd get a little tedious with 32 coefficients, just for Scadrien magic. And yeah, I was thinking of it as the change precipitated by the amount magic used.

Essentially, that means the Higgs boson is being messed with. Moved from the Physical Realm to the Cognitive/Spirituall but still tied to the particles it's tied too?

I guess from my prospective with a B.S. in physics, I just hate seeing the two used interchangably like in the thread. It's been years since I've thought about the FTL problem so I'm deficient on the current theories and didn't realize they've been used a little more interchangable than I think is appropriate. Okay, given my distaste for that changability, in universe I would postulate that instead of F = m*a (or m*g) governing weight of a body, it's F = µ*m*g, where µ is some feruchemy coefficient that modifies the total force acting upon a feruchemist. When decreasing weight, µ < 1, increasing weight µ > 1. Which leads me to think that µ might be a new universal coefficient within the Cosmere. Overall, the Cosmere magic systems need to make sense functionally. Each world has it's own unique abilities, but because they are offshoots of whatever was before Adonalsium's shattering, I would say that the physics, or at least the physics equations of any given world, should be the same. When magic isn't being used, µ = 1. Now, how that coefficient is expressed, might have to be defined a bit differently on each world, like µ(Scadrial) is going to be different than µ(Roshar), like the former being µ(Allomancy + Feruchemy) while the latter is µ(Surgebinding + Voidbinding + Old Magic? I don't really know what the third system on Roshar is). So, for all our real world physics equations, I think there's a corresponding Cosmere equivalent where µ is always expressed. If I were to attack this problem, I'd first look at some of the most fundamental equations in physics, and see how to modify them for the Cosmere. I believe Newton's Second Law can be rewritten as I stated above. It's an empirical law in our world, seems like a good empirical one for the Cosmeres. Now we'd just need to do that with all the other equations. Maybe if I decide to nerd out real hard, I'll do something like that.

Not to be pedantic, but decreasing weight isn't the same as decreasing mass. And it's specifically weight in the Ars Arcanum.

Nice, so we were both right! Knew I'd read something like that.

Harmony had Wax say everything out loud. If Hoid was actually there, and had a spike, and if Harmony was so inclined, he could have let Hoid listen in on both sides of the conversation.

There's a WoB that mentions before the Lord Ruler, allomancy existed. Just not in the form that lerasium conveyed. And it was much, much rarer. My guess would be that the Southerns had experience with that, and extrapolated their tech from there.

There's no reason for Sazed to be talking about any other set of humans other than the Southerns. We know the Southerns exist, and that they were almost destroyed. From context, he's talking about technology progressing since the Rebirth (I can't find the term Brandon uses in the book). Why would it be another off-world set of humans that he would compare the Northerns too? They would have a completely different knowledge set with respect to Scadrial humans. It's apples to oranges. No, it's the Southerns. And Harmony's worried about the North. They are clearly weak, enjoying their excesses, or at least those in power. But yeah, I want more info on the "second trilogy/urban fantasy" that Brandon was originally planning. I was thinking I'd read some place it was going to be a WWII/Cold War'ish story but that might just be my imagination at this point. It seems very clear to me, with the abundance of resources the Basin has, that the Southerns would be jealous, and want that land. Especially if Harmony didn't restore that area of the world to be particularly bountiful. Now I just need to actually finish the book. Came to the forums looking for this exact topic. I can't wait for whatever happens.

In one of the WoB, someone pointed out that it looked like a spiral galaxy. And Brandon got a bit excited that someone noticed. There was also something about each world in the Cosmere syncing up with Shadesmar and what I took away from it was that important landmarks in one world are "connected" to landmarks in another. Haven't pondered the implications much but something for people that care more to think about.

I'll have to watch for it on rereads. Most of these I've never noticed from Brandon. I did notice in The First Law trilogy all the characters using "huh", which annoyed the hell out of me. I don't think it's a problem if only one or two character used a specific quirk. When everyone does it though it really kills the immersion. As for the ticks, I grunt/snort when spoken to quite often. And I do a lot of eyebrow raising as well. I'm a pretty animated person, as my girlfriend and coworkers will attest too.

I've an undergraduate degree in physics so I'm definitely working on this based off of our laws. And while they are manipulating spacetime, that region of spacetime has electromagnetic/gravitational fields that are interacting. The way we represent those interactions is with particles (force transmitters, ie photons, gravitons). Allomancy could be the fifth "force" in his universe and all interactions happen to some unseen allomancy particles. I don't know. I've not followed Brandon's work long (notice when I joined the forum) to know how he's developed his system. I'm just taking a stab in the dark in a method that seems to make sense for me. With him bringing up thermodynamics, that leads me to particle interaction. Since thermodynamics is macroscopic effect of microscopic particle interactions (Statistical Mechanics).

As promised, I was at work thinking about the problem some more and I thought about what happens when the bullet Wax shot left the bubble. The bullet slowed down as it left the bubble, therefore the bubble had to gain both momentum and energy (refined from my previous thought, still not sure where the momentum problem is). I'm very curious what particles are responsible for making the bubble and how they act. My guess is that when an Allomancer burns his/her metal, those particles are energized, forming the bubble. When an Allomancer flares the burn, those particles gain even more energy, and the time difference increases. So, given that objects leaving a bubble are transferring energy to the particles of the bubble, you are in effect speeding up or slowing down the respective bubble. I could definitely see some sort of interactions in the future series where technology is able to isolate those particles, speed them up, and make a time bubble. How that relates to FTL, /shrug.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough information to verify my thoughts. I'll have to think about this more at work tomorrow. I really want to figure this out lol.

I can't remember if it was said anywhere in the book, but what happens when a person moves out of the bubbles? Or any object really. I don't ever specifically remembering that the object changes. Which would imply that the object's mass doesn't change. When the bullet Wax shot left the bubble, it's velocity slowed down (from the fast time bubble), which follows relativity correctly. Now, if my assumption above is true, and the bullet in fact doesn't change in mass (it should gain mass, and it losses mass if moving from a slow bubble), we have a conservation of momentum problem. Since m1*v1 =! m2*v2. I'm not saying this is what actually happened in the book since I don't remember, but it's a quick guess at part of the problem. And edit to say that I'm thinking about the rest of the problem. damnation you guys for nerd sniping me!

First post! I learned of Sanderson through Wheel of Time. He did an excellent job with both of the books for that series, and finding myself without anything to read, I finally bought the Mistborn trilogy winter 2010. I had some concerns about it since I felt his writing was stronger in the WoT books but I still enjoyed the books. In the last month I saw that Jim Butcher recommended Sanderson's books and currently being out of stuff to read, I ordered The Way of Kings as soon as I saw it was a fantasy epic. I was even more thrilled to see that he plans on writing ten books. Unlike many of my friends, I enjoy the painful years of waiting for a book to release lol and was really looking forward to sinking my teeth into a new epic series. Well, I finished up The Way of Kings today and I want more!!! I'm really blown away with how for a first book in the series, it doesn't really feel like a first book. He fleshed the world out in such a way that I feel I know so much about the world he's made already, which hasn't been the case in many of series. I just want more and there is a good part of me that wishes he'd just skip AMoL (which is going to be awesome!) to do another Stormlight book. I've officially become a Sanderson fanboi. I need to get the rest of his stuff now. And I kind of wish I lived in Utah so I could do some Magic drafts with him.