Eagle of the Forest Path

OK, so I've seen Isaac Asimov Arthur C. Clarke One more to go. The big 3 are all from the same "era", so HG Well is too early and Frank Herbert is slightly too late. Just a little hint: Think military science fiction.

That's actually explained another way on the Coppermind wiki, it's because they sometimes need to replace parts on lifeless, which means they get "farther removed from life". And it's sourced, so it's trustworthy.

Do the lifeless break Conservation of Energy? Since lifeless don't eat, they don't take in nutrients to burn for energy. But they still move, which expends energy (and they can move a mass of 1 kilogram over a distance of 1 meter). Unless I'm mistaken, that would mean lifeless cause a net increase of energy in the Cosmere.

Green: Cadsuane and Alanna Blue: Anaiya and Moiraine Red: Tarna and Pevara Gray: Annoura and Yukiri Yellow: Nynaeve and Romanda White: Seaine and Daigian Brown: Verin and Saerin Black: Alviarin and Liandrin You've never read The Wheel of Time, have you? WLIU, name the "Big Three" of science fiction.

Oops! Sorry. I typed in L-A- and then I guess muscle memory took over... As for the conversational confusion on my part, your explanation makes sense, and I can see that in Savae's part of the conversation, but Varael talking about "when we're done" still makes it sound (to me, at least) like Savae doesn't want to work with the Ashana anymore. You could substitute "when we're even", perhaps?

I'm not a fan of the amount of POV jumps in this chapter. Both Savae and Lasila have three POV paragraphs and at least for Lasila's second and third, the split seems rather arbitrary. In Savae's last paragraph, I'm confused as to Savae's actions. At first they seem to be saying that they don't want to keep working with Varael. But after the first "We clear?" they start listing how they can still be useful to him. The arguments don't really match up with their point/goal. Am I maybe misreading what Savae wants to get out of this conversation? There are some line edits I could offer, but you requested we don't, so this is all I've got for you at the moment.

I've been working on a story set on a world that's basically one giant ocean. People live in big, stone, skyscraper-like cities (I'm calling them spires) that stick up out of the water. My reasoning behind this is that these spires are built on the tops of mountains in an underwater mountain range, which are either just above or just below the water line. (never mind for now where they got the stone for building the spires) But now I've got a question which my relative lack of scientific education prevents me from finding an answer for. I'm hoping someone here can help me a bit. If the underseas mountain range was sort of circular, would it be possible that the interior of the range would be a lot shallower than the outside? I'd need something between 20 and 200 meters deep (about 60 to 600 feet) so my inhabitants can do seaweed farming. I could handwave this, I guess, but I really prefer not having to do that too often, or on too large a scale.

Not going to die, or not heterosexual? I'm thinking the first, but on the internet it pays to ask.

There we go! To be specific, Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. You're up next, DSC01.

Menace without malice. So, no. Next clue: The preparation for the defense includes procreating.

The correct answer's not been given yet. Second clue: The formerly vengeful orphan, now de facto world leader has to prepare said world for defense against a menace without malice.

No, but in a way you're pretty close.

Personally, I believe life sense has to do with Connection, not Investiture. Every Breath is essentially a piece of Endowment, meaning there is a Spiritual Connection between all Breaths. As a person gathers more Breath that Connection becomes stronger and more noticeable, resulting in a better (and eventually perfect) life sense. Drabs do have innate Investiture (spark of life), but still can't be detected through life sense, however strong, because they don't have their own little piece of Endowment to Connect with. Bronze operates on completely different principles, mostly explained in the books and WoBs, so I believe there is little or no overlap between Seeking and life sensing.

Sorry, it's still not in there. I was actually trying to describe Foundation by Isaac Asimov. How about this one: Vengeful orphan is taken away from home and gets selected to be a de facto world leader.

Wait, so you want to talk about magic making people ill (and maybe do stuff they don't want to), you bring up the example of Rand from WoT, and you felt the need to add an allergy? You've already got that exact same concept in the taint on Saidin, don't you? Unless I'm misreading your question? Also, you list a number of things that can go wrong, but you leave out one of the most basic things: an infection. From my layman's perspective, cancer and allergy are pretty complicated and would require a lot of effort to make an analogy in your magic system; infections have some basic principles as to progression, effect, and getting rid of them (anti-bodies, fever, violent expulsion of fluids),which most people know or at least can recognise. Maybe take some time to research that, lay out the rules you're going to use in your story, and then apply them to your magic system. For example. If in your magic system, your characters must build up a well of power that they use to cast spells and a bug got in there, a possible consequence would be that you have to empty your well to get rid of the illness. Meaning the magical equivalent of vomiting would happen: a violent, uncontrollable, involuntary outburst of spells.

Umm... no. Another hint then: Technology masquerading as religion. Conquest masquerading as trade. PS: it's been nearly a week, so if no-one gets it with this clue I'll move on to another story. PPS: it's a sci-fi story, so when I said "world" it actually meant "galaxy", but I thought using that straight out would have made it too easy.

I completely disagree. Voldy, Vader and Whatshisface are all inextricably tied to their respective protagonists, if you keep those relationships intact, you can mostly transplant the story to another setting (My name is Harry Potter. You killed my father. Prepare to die!). Your point fits very well with TLR, though. Looking at it from the other side, if you keep the You-Know-Who, Darth and Loki in their own settings but change the protagonists, the bad guys lose most, if not all, their relevance. If Vader wasn't Luke's dad, all that's left of that storyline is fight scenes with some fancy choreography and a lot of special effects.

That's probably okay for short stories, but I wouldn't want to rely too much on them for anything longer, personally. Writing prompts can cause a nice brainstorm now and again though, so it is well worth exploring them. Just remember that they are not plots by themselves, IMO it's best to think of them as the thing that starts you thinking towards your own plot. Getting started on a story depends on what type of writer you are, a discovery writer or an outliner. If you are a discovery writer I'd say to do a lot of writing prompts and write them into short stories, eventually something will catch your imagination and you can work that into something longer (or if you like, you can stick to short stories like Edgedancer said). For outliners it's a bit more complicated, you can still do the prompts (which will teach you a bit of how to discovery write at the same time) but it will probably be harder for you. I have another suggestion in case you're an outliner (which could still work for discovery writers, but will be harder), if you have only vague ideas for the setting, it might be worth it to expand on that. Go deeper into your world-building, think of how certain aspects of your setting will affect people's lives. Once you understand more of your world(s), you might discover what kind of story you'd like to tell in it(them). A warning though, if you go too far in this it could result in the dreaded world-builders disease, which in certain cases can only be cured by a radical inspiration-ectomy. A last suggestion is to create some characters, they are what will (or should) be the focus your story after all. If you create a character you really like, it's likely to be a good motivation for thinking of what you'd like them to do (or what you'd like to do to them, nyark, nyark). Basically true, but rather cynical, no? I like it!

Next hint: Four kings against one mayor, mayor wins.

Neither of those is correct, I'm afraid.

It happens not to be that. How about another hint, then? If all goes according to plan, it's only a thousand years till the next golden age.

It's not the Dark Tower. And The Way of Kings was a red herring, sorry.

Next description then: Person with knowledge of the future convinces ruler that writing a book will save the world.

Illuminae

Something I forgot in my original comment: you can add the trademark™ symbol with Alt Gr + T (or Alt + Shift + T, depending on your keyboard and/or operating system). That way you don't have to mess around with superscript.