Eagle of the Forest Path

Here's the first part of chapter 4. (Is it just an impression, or am I cranking these out pretty fast? Can I get a frame of reference here?) And here's another set of annotations. Hope you enjoy it. E.

I think I prefer Alan Cumming for Sazed. Vosloo's not lanky enough in my opinion and Malkovich is too old.

Regular mistwraiths are useful too. As a convenient body dump for political rivals, for instance. Undigested corpses can be so annoyingly recognizable after all. I imagine nobles would also appreciate how mistwraiths keep the Skaa afraid of being outdoors at night, though that's more the idea of mistwraiths than the actual gooey muscly blobs themselves, so I don't know how relevant it is. edited by reason of nitpicky sharders

Spiderwick chronicles?

Or someone (or something) is actively holding back Scadrial's technological progress.

You get a 25% off happy hour prices at Furby's Castle of Cabbage coupon. It is nearly expired. *inserts suicidal Spaniel*

I have considered it, but I'm a bit hesitant about joining with a story that's already partly posted elsewhere... Glad you like it CP.

The second part of chapter 3: I could write some annotations for this, but I don't feel like it right now. Eagerly awaiting feedback. E.

The difference between electroreception and seeking is that the first is a natural sense, while the latter isn't. The difficulty with storing seeking in a tinmind would be one of interference I imagine. You are trying to use investiture to store something that is based on investiture itself, and as we know from compounding, allomancy uses vastly greater amounts of investiture than feruchemy does, logically making it difficult for feruchemy to directly affect allomantic properties. (maybe this is why it's been so difficult to crack "reverse compounding"?). Also IMO any purely allomantic trait (as in, it doesn't exist outside of allomancy) would require so much metal to store it in that the tinminds required for storing seeking would be prohibitively large. Perfect life sense is another matter, since we don't know on what principles it works. If, as I believe, it is based on spiritual connection (that all humans [should] have with all of humanity) than it would be possible to store it in a duraluminmind, but probably not a tinmind. If, on the other hand, it is an actual sense in the proper meaning of the word, a tinmind would be possible, but still not likely. Then the problem becomes the manner of enhancement. Where on Scadrial investiture (both allomancy and feruchemy) enhances the quantity of information gathered by the senses, the Heightenings on Nalthis enhance the quality of the information. Let's use hearing as an example, the second Heightening grants perfect pitch, but does not grant the ability to hear more sounds than a regular person. Conversely, however much you use a tinmind to enhance your hearing (so you could hear a pin drop a mile away) no amount of tapping that attribute will grant you perfect pitch (or any improvement to pitch at all). As this is the case for Perfect Color Recognition (and probably Aura Recognition) as well, I don't see any reason for the trend not to extend to Perfect life sense too.

This was a mistake in the original. I believe it got fixed in the anniversary edition.

Actually, as proven by feruchemical Duralumin, interpersonal connections are mostly Spiritual, not Cognitive. And I believe the people actually have to know each other for there to be a connection.

The first part of chapter 3: Hope you like it.

I believe the appropriate metaphor here involves a river of excrement and a Native American water vessel without any means of propulsion.

IIRC, Reod Elantrians can't die - and don't need to eat or breathe - because they are "sustained by the Dor", isn't that a clear indication that they are in fact infused by it in some way?

The amount of an attribute that can be stored is definitely related to the size of the metalmind, in other words the amount of metal. This means metalminds can be filled to a limit and not beyond. Your measurement unit is usable, but I don't think it's possible to pinpoint an exact ratio of [attribute]-hours per gram, not in the least because there would be a different ratio for each metal, but also because we don't have sufficient source material in the books. It's also possible that the maximum amount of attribute per gram is affected by the skill or power of the feruchemist.

You take in external investiture, you shape it into an effect (i.e. you've gained something), no personal resources have been expended, how is that not end-positive?

You also need to include in your calculations 25 returned with about 2.000 breaths each, plus another 2.000 for the God king and however much additional breaths in the treasure, about 50.000? And 40.000 lifeless with 1 breath each, and 1.000 Kalad's phantoms IIRC with more than one breath, I think it was 50 each. But this is acting on the premise that every human breath comes directly from Endowment and not (at least partly) from the planet's 'background investiture', like non-Nalthian souls.

It could also be as simple as a Seon bonded to an Elantrian granting them the ability to breathe in stormlight when on Roshar. The question that follows is, when an Elantrian has stormlight inside, can he use that as a power source for AonDor as practised in Arelon (with the same Aons), or would the symbols have to be adjusted to the local geography as well, or is there some other factor preventing the use of Selish magics at all.

Is it something from the Chronicles of Xandim series?

"What do we want!" "Skaa Rights!" "When do we want it!" "After the Lord Ruler's dead!"

I'll give one last counterargument for gems, Moogle. If you can refute this, I'll give up trying to convince you. I think it's pretty clear that the different listener forms are one of the forms of magic on Roshar, that is, the changing of forms, not the abilities of any one form. If you define the focus as an element in the magic that defines the effect, listener's forms' dependence on which type of spren they attract during a highstorm is a powerful indication that spren are the focus of Roshar. You'll probably counter this by saying that the spren are trapped in gems before they even go into the highstorm, introducing gems into the equation again. In response I have to point out that the Parshendi only recently discovered how to trap spren in gems, making the process easier, but not substantively different. Before this discovery they had to go out into the storms and attract the correct type of spren by singing the right song. IMO this proves beyond a reasonable doubt (I've been watching lawyer shows recently ) that the current involvement of gems is of negligible relevance and that the true factor determining the effect of the listener's form change is the type of spren (i.e. the focus).

Honorblades grant access to surgebinding, true enough, but not any other magic system (voidinding, old magic). What I look for in a focus is something that is present in every system. That does not mean it has to be the only way into the system. Oathgate keyholes are part of a larger entity - the Oathgates - which contain big fabrial-style gems that could easily contain spren. You admit that Shardplate could very well be made out of spren, so why not the other items on your list (apart from Honorblades)? Harmony does create something that grants allomancy while not being a metal: the Mists, IMO the Honorblades are something similar. Just because they were the first way the system was used, does not mean that it is the 'natural' way. To me, the (likely) shardic involvement in the (creation of the) Honorblades makes them the more likely candidate to be the hack.

IIRC he looked into the Spiritual Realm, he didn't actually physically go there. Although what Elend did might be the closest any living human person can get to entering the Spiritual Realm. We know that it's mostly independent of Physical space and time, going there would really mess someone up, unless they're an actual shard.

"Napoleodium", brilliant! If Anne McCaffrey wrote the cosmere novels every book would have the word "Dragon" in the title somewhere. Any non-human in the books would have a name ending in "-th", a name they would know instinctively upon being born. There would be no bad guys, the part of the antagonist would be played by a mindless amorphous menace, because it's so nice when everyone on the whole world gets along. And even when someone does act in a way that displeases Vin and Elend - the de facto rulers of the planet - they wouldn't get killed, they'd just be sent to a paradise continent in "exile", never mind that they can teleport whenever they want. There would be countless time skips where months or years pass, narrated by summing up who had babies in the intervening period. Finally, the Shards would actually be kindhearted genius supercomputers that somehow still function after being buried for a few millennia.

Here's the new part which I wrote to bring chapter 2 to an acceptable word-count (I'm trying for 4.000-word chapters, give or take). So this comes before the ambush scene, just to be clear. No real story-related contents here, so no annotations this time.