Lewis Nethur

You have an uncanny memory to recall such a detail. You are of course, absolutely correct (Ebooks make looking things up much easier btw). So yeah...I really don't know what to think then. Weird. We didn't see any young Parshmen either. Maybe baby Parshendi/Parshmen are some messed up larva or something, who knows? It'd strike me as weird if their children came out in slave form, though I'd say anything is possible at this point...

"Unkeying" a dead shardblade to allow it to be revived and bonded by anyone...now there's a thought. Your logic seems sound enough @Darkness, I couldn't possibly imagine that this will come up in this first Stormlight Archive series...however...Roshar is definitely going to need crazy power ups and technological leaps forward if they're going to put up any kind of meaningful defense once the Scadrians start invading other planets (Clarification: Sanderson hasn't stated that they will, I just really hope they do). I'd be a little surprised if at least some of your theory doesn't end up being true in 10 years when the Cosmere is a little more fleshed out.

It does seem super weird that no Parshendi child ever shows up on screen. That is, until you remember how few human children appeared on screen. Considering that Eshonai has a mother, I agree that it's definitely a safe bet that Parshendi have some manner of children. Whether they hatch from eggs, are born as infants, or sprout off of the back of an adult Parshendi partially grown is, while an interesting question, ultimately of little consequence. I'm gonna go ahead and suggest that maybe Parshendi can only give birth in a highstorm, which would solve the formless baby problem. The Parshendi seemed pretty disturbed when they first met Parshmen, so I'm inclined to think that their babies don't plop out in Slave form.

I think I can shed some light on this. Aluminum, both here on earth, as well as on scadrial, is extremely difficult to find naturally in its pure form. Prior to modern industrial chemistry, aluminum was more expensive than gold; now we wrap it around food and throw it away. I believe the implication is that aluminum is so difficult to find and mine on Roshar that getting it by any means other than soulcasting would be silly. It would be extremely odd for their planet to lack such a common and abundant element, I think it's much more likely that it's just not economically viable to mine aluminum due to their lack of refinement processes, the rarity of naturally occurring pure aluminum, and their ability to soulcast.

There's actually somewhat of an in-book explanation for that. Warbreaker Spoilers:

I mean...spren are affected by people's perception...so maybe artifabrians just...wish them inside...?

Can plate or blade be truly irreperably destroyed? Maybe, maybe not. But it could almost certainly be lost forever in a Highstorm or buried in a landslide. Storm Wardens are relatively new on Roshar, so too I would assume is their ability to mathematically predict the coming of Highstorms. Considering that for most of the past 4,000 years the coming of Highstorms probably wasn't predictable, I'd assume there are a good number of blades and plates whose owners got trapped outside, either during a battle, or traveling between cities via ship, or whatever, and got blown across Roshar (or into the ocean). Seeing as how the Highstorms end at the entrance to Shinovar, I wouldn't be surprised if they've collected quite a number of relics thought to be lost forever (though probably not soulcasters, as they seem pretty amazed by soulcast goods brought by traders). Since new plates and blades haven't been getting created, it would actually be extremely peculiar if there were anywhere near as many available now as in the time of the Radiants. There would definitely have been people trying, and to some degree succeeding, over the years in stockpiling sets, meaning relatively significant numbers of shardbearers fighting under one flag (five, a dozen, whatever)...Meaning that, if disaster struck, and statistically speaking, over 4,000 years of near constant warfare and unpredictable super-hurricanes, disaster is going to strike at some point, that many sets of shards could be swept up by a storm, lost in a hurricane, drowned and sucked into the ocean by a tidal wave, or buried in a landslide or avalanche. Once it became known that a nation or lord had lost all of their shards in a disaster, it's probably a safe bet that their enemies would come crashing down on them, and roving bands of pillaging armies don't make the best historians/recorders of lost ancient treasures.

Enough augmenter fabrials could definitely make a shield effectively indestructible, but the real power of Captain America's shield lies in its ability to dampen impacts and vibrations when struck (which is why the holder's arms don't go numb when they use it to block a stream of bullets from a machine gun...). (I think they've taken to calling the material it's made out of "Vibranium" or something similar in the new movies; not sure if this is consistent with older stories or not) By a happy coincidence, Shardplate already does this to an extent (which is why falling off a roof and landing on his head repeatedly doesn't give Renarin a traumatic brain injury; if you tried that feat in plate mail, or even normal magical indestructible wizard-armor, you'd still be hurt. I propose the use of Diminisher fabrials! Considering that Augmenters can be used to increase thermal energy, which is literally inducing vibrations in surrounding atoms, I would posit to you all that a Diminisher ought to be capable of dampening vibration, perhaps even absorbing an impact entirely. This would absolutely violate the law of conservation of momentum (as well as the first and second laws of thermodynamics and probably all of the laws of motion...) but...shardplate already does it...so there's no reason the phenomenon couldn't be replicated.

Welcome to the community, an interesting theory and thoughtful post, have an upvote! As an aside, I have to agree with @Stormgate that, for the time being, we don't have quite enough information to have much meaningful discussion about Truthwatchers; still, I've always been a fan of good speculation!

No worries, you won't find any judgement here. I sort of gave up my right to critically evaluate how other people spend their free time when I decided to systematically identify and analyze specific scenes in fictional stories and attempt to apply mathematics to them in an attempt to establish a more-or-less concrete continuity between the abilities of magical heroes and artifacts. I consider myself an intelligent person, so trust me when I say that I realize how...silly...that endeavor sounds. That said, I have no plans on stopping. To whomever might know or have an opinion: I've thought of some holes in my first couple posts on this thread that are significant enough that I'd like to amend the numbers I put out, but I'm probably going to be too swamped with work to post for at least a week or two. Would it be more appropriate to edit my earlier posts, reply to the bottom of this topic, or start a new topic? I would only start a new topic if I could concisely outline all the "conclusions" I've developed in this topic (amended to reflect the additional information that's become available) as well as present significant new dialog. If no one has any strong feelings I'll just decide arbitrarily once I'm free again TLDR; Sometimes it's our hobbies that keep us happy enough, as well as sane enough, to be contributing members of society. Even if those hobbies are a bit esoteric or don't conform with convention.

This is purely speculation on my part, but I've been operating under the assumption that they capture spren by getting them to materialize (maybe "pop into the physical realm" is a more accurate term?) inside the gemstone. For example, if you wanted to "catch" a flame spren, you would leave a gem cut to a specific pattern, both of which I assume are determined by some combination of research and trial-and-error, near a lit flame until a flame spren inadvertently ends up appearing inside the gem. Since gemstones on Roshar have the ability to hold onto investiture based on how they're cut (certain cuts hold stormlight better), the spren has difficulty getting back out, and in the extreme case where the gem type and pattern precisely coincide with the spren's intent it is trapped. I would also speculate that an imperfectly cut gemstone, or a gemstone cut to a pattern that is close to the ideal pattern for capturing a specific spren, would probably be capable of temporarily holding a spren against its will. I choose to believe this explanation because it allows for the possibility of artifabrians conducting legitimate systematic research and development in the field without having to resort to any pokemon-esqe nonsense. Again, this is pretty much just the theory I came up with to satisfy my own curiosity about how the heck spren are captured until more information is available.

Sound manipulation will need to be carefully regulated by Sanderson-applied controls on Lightweavers for this particular reason (resonance phenomna). Certain low frequency vibrations, if applied long enough (several minutes to several hours) can topple buildings; the crazy thing is that the energy output of the sustained vibration can be ludicrously small despite being even more effective than a single massive shockwave. How they make or manipulate sound will have to be useful without being counter-intuitive or outrageously powerful. For example, if Shallan could create/output/produce a sound (pressure wave) originating from any source of her choosing she could make it sound like shouting is coming from around a corner to create a distraction, but she could also blowout people's eardrums or explode their hearts/arteries by instead making the sound originate inside a person's head/chest, which would require trivial amounts of mechanical energy compared to kaladin's flying...If there's one thing this thread has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's that the ability to initiate or alter sound on any level or scale can quickly go from useful and interesting to needlessly powerful and undermining the plot very quickly if not handled expertly. There's probably more room to be loose with the rules surrounding light creation/manipulation since its previously been established that the physics surrounding light in the Cosmere differ in key ways from those in our universe and electromagnetic theory took people on Earth a pretty long time to flesh out (and we didn't have the threat of demons crawling out of the ground.) TLDR; From what is currently known, Lightweavers have the potential to be outrageously powerful. Studying physics is hard during an apocalypse, so crazy destructive light weapons based on advanced electromagnetic and field theory are probably a long long ways off (but who knows, it is Sanderson after all).

Some of the surges, like transformation or transportation, could probably be described as a form of wave manipulation, however, I think there are probably more elegant and simpler explanations. There are some very simple and understandable controls that Sanderson could apply to Lightweavers to keep them from becoming unfairly powerful or duplicating other orders' powers, for example, he could: 1. Restrict them to light (IE: electromagnetic radiation) creation/manipulation in the visible spectrum (this could be accomplished by simply pointing out that, if they're manipulating non-visible light, they can't see what they're doing, which could make things very difficult) = no covertly x-raying people to give them cancer and no telekinesis, but still can shoot very powerful laser beams 2. Make laser creation require a tremendous degree of skill or too much stormlight to be used unless one is outside during a highstorm 3. Restrict sound/pressure wave creation/manipulation to the audible frequency range = little to no building demolition 4. Make the amount of stormlight required to produce/manipulate a sound/pressure wave a quadratic/exponential function of the amount of energy released in the wave (linear might actually be enough though...earthquakes involve many orders of magnitude more energy than levitating or gluing things together...) 5. Require that manipulation of waves above/below a certain amplitude require an impossible degree of control/skill to establish effective limits 6. Restrict the rate at which a person can discharge stormlight without dying (Szeth's and Kaladin's clothes start to freeze when they burn through light too quickly, so I think this one is already on its way to being established)

I think "broken" is a poor word choice in this case. For example, Ruin was able to communicate directly with the mentally ill due to the naturally occurring gaps in their spirit webs; the gaps/holes/cracks weren't created by any external force, they developed naturally as a result of the individual's brain chemistry. I'd argue this is how Renarin was able to bond a spren; sure, he's had his feelings hurt and suffers from social anxiety, but it seems to me that it has been his own internal and mental struggles, which most likely would have occurred no matter when/where he was born or who his family was, that poked the holes in his spirit web. (obviously he also had to have the right inclinations and had to be judged worthy by a spren as well) ((there may even be a luck element in it, who knows?)) So for comparison, Renarin faces personal growth struggles on the Autism Spectrum. It's kind of a tough lot, and I feel for him, but he doesn't really seem to have any cognitive deficits, and he's adapted very well and relatively quickly. He got a spren somewhere around age 20ish? Kelsier led a high-stress life of crime for about 30-40ish years (?), only snapping after watching his wife get executed in his place after months of malnutrition, beatings, grueling physical labor, and daily deep lacerations across his arms. All considered, I think the "size" of the gaps a person needs in their spirit web in order to be able to participate in a magic system in the cosmere isn't something that is going to be identifiable since people appear to crack at different rates, and some of them start off with gaps. Some people develop cracks participating in normal everyday life where others remain unchanged in the face of tremendous adversity; the similarity is that the cracks exist, however, I don't see how their "size" can be meaningfully compared and contrasted. In other words, saying one person is "more" broken than another is usually going to be subjective.

Not sure if this is too far off the main topic...but my personal understanding of Vasher's memory erasing technique was that he used some of his breath to fill the cracks/holes in the little girl's spirit web opened by her traumatizing ordeal. Thus, her memory loss regarding what had been done to her during her kidnapping was simply a side effect of his patching up the holes that had been ripped in her web. In that way, Vasher can't just arbitrarily erase people's memories, he can only erase specific memories relating to events traumatic enough to damage an individuals spirit web.

Something I haven't seen mentioned yet: Vibrations (sound waves) can be very effective at destroying large structures. in 1831 the Broughton Suspension Bridge (144 ft long) collapsed due to the vibration caused by 74 soldiers marching across with synchronized footsteps. Modern building codes are designed to prevent this type of failure, but to this day, soldiers around the world are not allowed to march in step across bridges... Lightweavers would make fantastic saboteurs; by continuously applying relatively low frequency and low magnitude sound waves they could bring down just about any structure they're likely to encounter. (at least until Roshar develops modern engineering and architectural design methods and rigorously enforces them) ((which is really hard to do without a strong central government)) (((which they don't have)))

Touche, it seems I have played the part of the Fool Eshu. You're right of course, I was mainly only giving consideration to battles involving two sides of well prepared tight lines of soldiers...a silly mistake on my part, but still glad I made it considering the quality of the counter-argument it drew out.

I think it's mentioned in Secret History, along with the explanation that Ruin and Preservation made the people on Scadrial using what they knew of people from other inhabited planets in the Cosmere, which is how they ended up making some Feruchemists; also, Sanderson has stated that Hoid is a Feruchemist and that he didn't receive any of his powers through hemalurgy.

I hadn't considered the fact that you really could conceivably damage multiple targets with a single Grandbow arrow, so props on that point. But 2nd line generals in Altheti forces generally loan or give their shardplates and blades to their more combat-skilled underlings as I understand it. A reserve shardbearer strikes me as a little odd. The parshendi do it to try and kill Dalinar...but not deploying their shardbearer early also needlessly cost them hundreds, maybe thousands, of additional lives as part of a gamble that didn't pay out...I'd think a shardbearer would be more useful for creating weakspots in enemy lines, rather than taking advantage of them. Who knows though, Sanderson is a tricky one, I can't say I'd be completely dumbfounded if he found a way to make good use of Grandbows later in the series. Edit: Sorry for the double-post...I didn't realize @Erunion responded before my last one posted...

In general, no, I don't think a shardbow would be particularly useful for sniping individual soldiers or parshendi. That's not to say it couldn't be used that way; a person or pashendi hit by a Grandbow would probably resemble a cake being hit with a baseball, armor/carapace or no armor/carapace. But it comes down to a question of battlefield tactics and combat effectiveness. In general, I would think that a shardbearer, whether they have a shardblade or are completely unarmed, is going to be most effective in close quarters combat, specifically, at the head of a charge where they can either cut through, smash, or otherwise maim multiple targets with sweeping strikes, while using their incredible weight and momentum to tear open holes in enemy lines. I believe Dalinar and Adolin make use of this type of maneuver several times to open holes in parshendi lines, allowing their normal infantry soldiers to outflank and rout the enemy. A Grandbow might be good for taking potshots at an enemy shardbearer whom you didn't want to face in close quarters...But even at the very start of a battle, even an unarmed shardbearer is almost always going to be more useful leading a charge than sniping individual targets. It's difficult to imagine realistic scenarios where such a weapon would be of strategic use except for hunting greatshells, where mobility is key, or taking potshots at enemy shardbearers during lulls in a battle, since traditional siege weapons (which can be operated with just a handful of normal soldiers) would still outstrip them in terms of range and destructive force, and normal arrows (which can be shot in huge numbers by normal soldiers) are a pretty effective anti-infantry tool already.

The whole cross-over process for creating new God-Metals on Scadrial is super weird to begin with...from what I understand, by becoming invested in Scadrial, a shard is able to manifest its powers through the local magic systems (IE: hemalurgy and allomancy). Things get a little hazy (misty?) when you ask the reverse question: "What would happen if Sazed invested himself in Roshar?" Would he create new spren/surges? Some weird messed up form of allomancy? Or something else entirely? To answer the question, "Could a mistborn burn a piece of shardplate they swallowed?" I'd have to say probably not, since the material it's made of wasn't created by a shard becoming invested in Scadrial. I suspect the next Mistborn trilogy (which isn't due in the near future as far as I'm aware...) will shed a good deal more light on this. NOW! As to the question, "could a Feruchemist store an attribute in shardplate?" I have no idea, maybe? Feruchemy, I believe, has been confirmed to have existed before the shattering of Adonalsium and isn't native to Scadrial. I'm sort of tempted to assume that a Feruchemist could therefore store an attribute in anything that constitutes a "God's Body." That said, I doubt we'll be seeing any Feruchemist-Radiants, since they'd basically have the ability to rapidly store arbitrarily large amounts of speed, healing, strength, senses, and maybe other attributes...and reading about a character that is perfectly indestructible get's boring quick (which is probably why Hoid appears only in short bursts)

The Fun Part: If the arrows were solid (and made of wood) and shattered on contact (worst case scenario in terms of doing damage to the target), they'd still be delivering almost 4x the impact of a professional athlete swinging a baseball bat, which, just off the top of my head, ought to be enough to ruin a person's day if they aren't wearing some kind of magical inertia-dampening armor (shardplate). If the intended targets are people, the Grandbows are, simply put, wildly over-engineered, as crossbows made centuries ago could punch through plate armor. I assume then that the Grandbows were designed as a kind of portable (ie: high-mobility) siege weapon. For the purpose of wounding/killing soldiers from a distance, a shardbearer could probably do more damage at a faster rate by carrying around and throwing fist-sized rocks than by aiming and shooting a bow. With that in mind, I'd think it would make the most sense to maximize the destructive force of the arrow as greatly as possible, which is accomplished by optimizing both velocity and mass. Velocity is more important and can be increased by decreasing the projectile's mass, however (due to air-resistance), after a certain point (which is generally estimated using differential equations and then more clearly identified through repeated experimentation) reducing the mass further results in a net-loss in the destructive force of the projectile. The mass of the arrow can be reduced by either removing material from its outside or hollowing it out. Reducing the outside diameter of the shaft reduces the amount of air-resistance it will be subjected to (thereby increasing velocity) by making it more aerodynamic. Although it may seem somewhat counter-intuitive, a hollow tube is usually going to be more structurally stable than a solid cylinder of the same mass; the wider the hollow tube, the greater its stability to mass ratio, but this too is a delicate maximization problem. If the stability to mass ratio isn't high enough the arrow will shatter on impact, which reduces how effectively it transfer energy to the target. These design considerations are why modern aluminum/carbon fiber arrows are relatively thin (to minimize their profile without becoming flimsy), thick-walled (to optimize weight), and hollow (to maximize their stability-to-weight ratio). If Grandbow arrows were made of metal, they would have to be hollow otherwise they would be too heavy to be effective projectiles, however, in terms of maximizing the destructive capacity of metal arrows, it would make more sense to make the arrows thinner than they are described in the book if a reduction in mass was desired, which is why I've concluded that the arrows must be made of wood. I'm not aware of any instance of hollow wooden arrows being used in real-life (except by very dedicated hobbyists) as its hard enough to keep a wooden arrow's weight balanced without trying to drill a hole straight through its center (lengths of wood usually aren't uniformly dense) and while the stability-to-weight ratio increases, there's actually an overall loss of stability due to the loss in mass. I'm starting to think I've put too much thought into this at this point...but still, always happy to contribute to a dialog! TLDR; Grandbows = Good at damaging/wounding individual high-value impact-resistant targets like Greatshells and possibly shardbearers and castle walls as well. Grandbows = Suck at killing soldiers compared to what a shardbearer is, generally-speaking, otherwise capable of.

True, I can't prove that the arrows aren't hollow, however, for projectiles as large as these, the amount of air-resistance would be tremendous. Without access to both an aviation and well-stocked material science lab it's difficult to say, but I'm pretty confident that, if they wanted to reduce the weight of the shafts, shaving the outside down, rather than hollowing them out would result in much better accuracy and range, and a solid shaft of that size probably wouldn't rip apart at those speeds and forces. I feel like I may have glazed over these points before, so thanks for the opportunity to clarify!

Touche. I guess he'll just have to be fantastically overpowered without one...

I believe the WoB is that the sword Hoid is seen carrying around in WoK is not an Honorblade. Also, I believe it was confirmed that Shinovar only has 7 of the blades. Even if that doesn't include Szeth's that still leaves one blade totally unaccounted for, not including Taln's. From what we've seen, Hoid does like to steal new powers from the worlds he visits, it really wouldn't shock me if he ended up keeping one of the Honorblades permanently.