DrakeMarshall

Granted. The village sandwich maker makes you a sandwich (too many references). I wish for Wayne to ascend to shardholder of honor. And since he is ascended and no longer has a physical body, I'll also ask for his lucky hat.

I think another big reason we have so many worldhoppers in this series is because stormlight archive is supposed to be a sort of epic in the cosmere... I mean mistborn is obviously a long story and such (if we get four trilogies for the different eras that is twelve books!), but I believe Sanderson intended Stormlight Archive to be a very ambitious series, after all it will have ten books. I look forward to seeing all these future books

It is certainly legit to think that the stormfather was there in ancient times... But we don't know for sure that this is the case. There is no reason to assume that the knights radiant showed up at the exact same moment honor and cultivation traveled to Roshar and presumably made humans there. In fact, the fact that the stormfather "betrayed" the listeners to humanity implies that humans existed for some time before the stormfather's defection, meaning that honor was probably around for a little while before making radiants. Thus the stormfather could easily have been part of honor, although it could also viably have existed before then. Probably the storms were a natural pattern on the planet before any shards got involved. If storms always existed as a natural pattern, then there may have been a sort of natural investiture associated with them, in which case the stormfather has existed probably since before the shattering. Or maybe they were just storms before honor showed up and invested them. Also the adaption in of itself is no evidence because honor could have adapted life forms like the lord ruler changed plants with the power of preservation... But I think the WoB settles that question; storms have apparently existed on Roshar since ancient times. I don't think we really know either way if the Stormfather existed since ancient times though. I would be very interested to find out what the stormfather actually is... He is related to honor's cognitive shadow in some ways, but the details are vague. Fortunately, I think since Dalinar's book is coming next, we will probably find out a lot more about the nature of the stormfather soon.

The time was wasted long before the vogons showed up... You can thank the golgafrinchams for that.

If you've read all the books... You mean 6 and 9, right? Because I mean, the question...

I believe that it is more odium's arrival that changed him however... I think it could be said that the stormfather probably is a part of honor, but when Tanavast died that obviously had implications for the stormfather.

I mean you can also buy atium or electrum with cash... But you have to be metalborn for these things to work. And you can't by atium with cash in the second era scadrial (I would bet that atium is returning in the third era though).

Nah, I believe the cosmere only consists of a single galaxy. It serves pan-cosmere gargle blasters.

Interesting. I'm not so sure about hoid being a dragon... Sort of hard to back that up although there is white hair, since we don't know a lot about cephandrus' background... But the bit about the recipient of his letter being a dragon... I think that's very perceptive. The recipient very likely is a dragon, given that line.

Technically the most obvious worldhopper is a certain distinctive object... That's what first tipped me off about the presence of the cosmere.

I also note that Brandon said Harmony "didn't know how to reach the beyond". This is a fairly tricky turn of phrase, because he isn't really saying for sure if other shards can in fact interact with the beyond... It's actually possible that they can interact with the beyond then. Which would make a lot more sense. As for the cognitive aspect and the soul... I suspect from my knowledge of realmatics that both go on to the beyond actually. The soul and mind seem to both be pretty integral parts in making up a sentient being and I don't think sending only one on would work out too well. Similarly I imagine Kelsier's cognitive shadow still had the soul attached to it, but the two were unpaired from his body when it died.

Well... I think we all agree that the nature of the diagram seems to imply some kind of shard's agenda. Not necessarily, but probably. These supernatural prescience came from a shard's power, after all... At a very minimum, the predictions could be warped by the source shard's intent and view of the world. Plus there is the fact that it looks like Taravangian is doing a lot of strange things that will really only make sense if all of these align with a shard's agenda. Initially I had suspected that it was odium who had a hold on Taravangian. This is what a lot of you have voiced. It sort of lends itself to a train of thought similar to what ruin did to the prophecies, but I don't think Sanderson would recycle an idea like that. Actually, there might be a WoB out there that states that Rayse isn't pulling an Ati with Taravangian's diagram. I don't think it actually is odium whose influence is most prominent here... First of all, there is the fact that Taravangian's initial curse/blessing was received from the nightwatcher, who we are all but certain is some kind of extension of cultivation. Second of all, unlike honor, we aren't actually sure if cultivation is dead or not. That makes it more likely for cultivation to be pulling tricks like this. Third of all, again, I don't think we can assume that honor and cultivation are in perfect accord. Their intents can not be the same, else they wouldn't form different shards. Now, currently that means there is an entire living shard on the planet whose agenda is completely not represented or accounted for, so far as we know. I think at least one of the characters we know of so far represents the agenda of cultivation. Taravangian just happens to be a good candidate since technically you could say his powers came from cultivation. Lift technically also has significant affiliation with cultivation, but she is also a surgebinder, which means she is actively serving honor... Plus we haven't seen her doing anything that seems inexplicable without an extra force in play. Taravangian, on the other hand, does plenty of things that require explaining. A mystery like Taravangian is a perfect place to hide the motives of a shard we weren't aware of yet. If there's anything we have learned from Hero of Ages and Secret History, it's that a lot of details and mysteries in the story tend to end up connecting to the struggles of resident shards... So what actually is cultivation's agenda? This is a very good question. The struggles of odium and honor play out much more obviously in the story of Roshar. This is part of what makes me suspicious that Cultivation has some big plan in motion that we don't know about yet. Bottom line is, I strongly suspect Taravangian is the most prominent representative of cultivation's interests that we have seen so far. He probably isn't aware of the fact, but I think he is a servant of cultivation.

A restaurant that only serves a drink? How unorthodox. Still, the pan-galactic gargle blaster is considered the best drink in the universe. Worldhoppers of all types will frequent my restaurant! Hm... Granted. As part of your wish you are transported to Roshar so you may bond your honorspren. You join the ranks of the windrunners with your honorspren... Just before the recreance. I wish for a gold brick with a piece of lemon wrapped around it.

Granted. However, since these wishes are granted by the nightwatcher, each of these in turn have their own banes. Be careful what you wish for... But that's more a side effect of getting multiple wishes from the nightwatcher. The bane given you in exchange for still getting multiple wishes of any kind is that you contract a tissue necrosis disease. Lets say it's leprosy, because that term refers to a majority of tissue necrosis conditions. I wish to become the proprietor of the restaurant at the end of the cosmere.

I love this theory. I have a suspicion that such an area would be located in the cognitive realm, because it then by definition is accessible only to worldhoppers, and because that seems like a cool twist. It would also explain why it needs raw materials from other worlds through trade, since you can't get physical material from the cognitive realm (although would you need physical material anyway? perhaps not)... A shard host? Maybe. I think however that the conflicting interests of worldhopping groups implies that if there is a shard in charge, it isn't one that is remotely embroiled in politics. It lets the people who frequent it's "restaurant" to come and go and do as they please. Personally, I bet that the restaurant is hosted by Aggrajag (if anyone gets the arcane hitchhikers reference high five, I cracked up when I read that bit). As for the question in the beginnings of this thread about whether a shard could escape a black hole's event horizon... That depends. In the physical realm, nothing but maybe hawking radiation can escape. In the cognitive realm... Well we perceive a black hole as inescapable, does that make it such in the cognitive realm? And do the effects of relativity apply in such a place as the cognitive realm? It seems like the cognitive realm sort of has it's own types of space-time distortions... As for the spiritual realm... If a shard even has easy access to this realm, this is probably the best bet for escape, since there isn't very much spiritual "weight" about a big pile of mass that happens to exceed a limit where it develops an event horizon. Unless that is we are to assume that a black hole includes an actual singularity, in which case... Things get a lot weirder. Assuming the presence of a singularity a shard trapped there might be able to turn the singularity into a sort of mini-universe driven only by the power of that single shard.

Hm... One could potentially use lashing to adapt themselves to a larger gravity ahead of time, or perhaps be on a planet with a very different gravity and still feel normal. Anyway, back on track with the original point... An Elantrian with stormlight. Which by the way might actually just be any Elantrian living on Roshar, because we know returned can absorb stormlight... With this you would literally look like a god to everyone with Elantrian appearance and glowing stormlight. Taravangian's curse with feruchemical zinc. I suspect that the net result from this storage would be end positive because there is no upper limit to intellect but there is a lower limit, plus with this you can turn yourself into a genius while keeping your compassion which turns his curse into a significant blessing. Type IV awakening and feruchemy. Being able to fuel a nightblood like entity on something like stored weight would be extremely useful I would bet. Hemalurgy and awakening. You get somebody to give your their breath. Then you kill them with a hemalurgic spike. Then you turn them into a lifeless with the breath you stole from them. Then you spike the lifeless to give it a single superhuman blessing. Obviously an unsavory way to make an army but it's still very powerful. Feruchemical health/heat/nourishment/sleep/strength/speed with stormlight. I'm pretty sure stormlight gives you a measure of all these things, so this would give you pretty large reserves I suspect. Lightweaving and soothing. I suspect Shallan would be even better at infiltrating and persuading and a lot of the things she does if she was also a Soother, no? The powers work together quite well. Same basically goes for rioting. Fabrials, ettmetal constructs, and awakening. You could create some incredible things with these three. Such a machine could have the abilities of both the metallic arts and surgebinding, playing to the relative strengths of both powers. And the machine could be awakened to accomplish a lot of tasks without any specific mechanism to drive it. With these three things, you could make a very sophisticated robot with only the most basic of mechanical proficiency, and no understanding of electronics. With these things it just gets more awesome. And if we are going to allow that you can also draw aons on these things... Pretty soon it gets pretty insane. Elsecalling and seeking. Useful because you have particularly effective worldhopping powers (I don't think an elsecaller needs to use a perpendicularity like most worldhoppers seem to), and you can sense the powers from any world. As cosmere awareness goes, this is a pretty sweet package. Radiant kandra. This is sort of a weird idea... But if you think about it, this might create a sort of achilles situation. A radiant is incredibly tough (I remember hearing somewhere that a radiant can only be killed by a strong blow to the head). A kandra is also incredibly tough (a lot of the things MeLaan does in BoM testify to that), but more importantly their physiology is extremely fluid. So... Wherever the radiant-kandra chooses to stash it's "brain" would be the only point where you could really damage such a being. Like achilles, attacking anywhere else would be incredibly useless, but if you hit that achilles-heel location hard enough, you could kill them. Mistborn and shardblade. A shardblade sure beats a glass dagger, and allomancers still can't push on it. It's sort of the ideal blade for a mistborn to wield.

This gives a fascinating idea about the chemistry of god metals... Could you have an alkali god metal? For that matter, while we know god metals can alloy with things... Can you bond them to strongly electronegative elements and the like, or are they inert? If ettmetal is indeed a god metal but it reacts with water, it apparently isn't very inert at all... It might react with all sorts of things to form weird compounds that aren't pure god metal or god metal alloy but might still do stuff. You know, based on all that, I don't think ettmetal could possibly be a god metal because the chemistry of that, and the resultant magic, would be terrifically confusing and disorderly (and most of Brandon's magic systems have a sort of elegant simplicity to the, despite the complex ways people use them). The implications of a strongly reactive god metal are just problematic... I mean... If we are going to over-analyze this... What even are the structures of an atom of god metal? Are they the "island of stability" or what? Do they invoke some kind of subatomic particle that doesn't exist in normal physics? But on the subject of existing alkali metals, lithium is a good guess in regard to what naturally is likely to occur as a solid metal... But I think potassium is the only naturally occurring alkali metal that could potentially be used to make an actual bomb, since lithium sort of just fizzes when you put it in water. Cesium has about the right magnitude of explosion, but there is no chance that you would find such an element as a pure compound naturally, so I don't think it's cesium. I mean, it could be a new alkali metal... If god metals are allowed to occupy some kind of aberration on the periodic table, maybe ettmetal is another such anomaly but not a god metal? Hard to say. I have a sneaking suspicion it's just potassium, but it is hard to know one way or another. Also, given that we know ettmetal can do some magical things... Can it be burned for allomancy, spiked for hemalurgy, or made into a metalmind for feruchemy? Another interesting question, which would be hard to answer since 1) there are no mistborn or full feruchemists to test this out 2) if it explodes on contact with water ingesting it for allomancy would probably kill you the second reason probably means that you can't use it for these things, only to power magical machines.

There's the glowing, plus it doesn't harm non surgebinders, plus I don't think a gemstone would be a very good way to hold charge. They aren't exactly capacitors. On Roshar they seem to be the stormlight equivalent for a capacitor though... It would be very, very interesting to see a later era Roshar mass producing bits of surface mount gems to put in fabrial circuitboards.

Hm... I suppose it is worth asking... To what extend does a magic user's powers change when they travel to a different planet?

Hm... I just think that odium is too obvious for Trell. But you are right to say that odium might somehow be involved. I'm not sure how the intent of autonomy factors in to what this hostile force is doing either... The phrase "rusts and ruin" would initially imply that rust is associated with ruin... But given we have a WoB that says it references Trell... Well "ruin" is obviously a reference to ruin, but "rusts" could be a lot of things. Is Trell in some way related to ruin? Hm... Also with the color codes, there are sixteen shards so the colors aren't necessarily going to be laid out so cleanly as we saw them with ruin and preservation.

Three years later... I'm just going to point out that perhaps it isn't so much about magnitude, as illustrated in the feather and sledgehammer analogy... Maybe it has more to do with realmatics. It seems to block cognitive abilities, not weak ones. I would venture to say that copper creates a sort of interference field like a radio disruptor might, but in the cognitive realm. And that it does not do so in the physical realm because it doesn't block iron pulling, and that it does not do so in the spiritual realm because it doesn't block atium. Burning a metal would be rather visible in the cognitive realm, because you aren't even using magic so much as tapping into the powers of a colossal external shard. I imagine that this is why feruchemy is much harder to detect with bronze, because it is much more internal. Surgebinding is probably also harder to detect, but likely easier to detect than feruchemy since stormlight is a bit more exotic of a type of investiture than, say, weight. It stands to reason that most types of magic use can be noticed if you are listening for them in the cognitive realm (ie burning copper), because pretty much any investiture is probably going to be observable in some form in the cognitive realm, especially if it is being actively moved around / changed / put to use. By this theory, a coppercloud wouldn't block a windrunner from using the lashings... But it might at least make it more difficult for an elsecaller to use either of their abilities. Depending on whether life sense is spiritual or cognitive, it may or may not block life sense. If this is the case, it would likely also block things like kelsier's cognitive shadow from occupying your location, and even maybe make it harder for a shard to communicate with you. It would not however outright negate many types of magic that directly impact the physical realm. Bronze could probably detect something like awakening or surgebinding, but would probably be a lot better at detecting things like allomancy and AonDor, both of which draw on external forces to produce effects.

Copper compounding and medallions probably would make books obsolete, not school, no? I mean, they are a superior way of holding information, because the time it takes to assimilate information from a coppermind is theoretically instantaneous where a book needs to be read through. But otherwise it has the same effect as a book, which is to say we still would use schools. Mind you, one can learn with only a book and no school if they are determined, but school definitely helps. It would be interesting to see someone selling chromium medallions... Lol I just thought of something with your talk about taking measures against allomancy in schools... "No smoking" signs would have a double meaning

Here's some irony... Things in the cognitive realm are referred to as cognitive shadows... A cognitive shadow with a shadow. Actually here is an interesting thought... So shards can't really access the great beyond apparently... So, if a soul of the dead ultimately goes someplace where a shard can't even access it... Does it sort of follow that a shard can't really create a soul any more than it can commune with a soul that has passed on? And yet ruin and preservation certainly created life on scadrial... Interesting considerations which I bet Sanderson has an interesting answer to...

Well... So far we know that there is religion about the tranquiline halls being lost... Also that Braize is literally odium's home planet and in Roshar's religion they refer to hell as Braize, letting us know that maybe there is something to their knowledge of the afterlife... And we also know that something unusual happens to people when they die, related to odium, because of the death rattles which are caused by an unmade of odium according to Taravagian's diagram. So... Yes, there is an excellent case for some kind of aberration in Roshar's afterlife. I don't think we can say with confidence where exactly the spirits go when they die on Roshar, but I think there is good reason to believe that for now the spirits are unable to pass into the great beyond... It is likely that at some point somebody will "fix" the afterlife.

For some reason, it doesn't protect you very well from soothers... But it's still immune to steelpushing... Weird... Strange, leaving something so nice lying around. I never died with this skinless golf ball on me... It must be lucky. I'll keep it. I'm trading it for a hemalurgically imbued snickerdoodle.