Jofwu

I do feel like Nightblood has some kind of limit on how much power he is able to wield at once. I mean, I don't think he would become all-powerful in a highstorm... He'd just be able to operate at maximum danger level for an extended period of time. Still scary, but not as bad as you might imagine. That IS terrifying!

Perhaps a spren initiated a bond with Szeth? I wouldn't be surprised if he buried it down, not unlike Shallan, but that now we'll see it resurface. I don't think that his alarm necessarily has to do with voidbringers or voidspren directly. Surgebinding seems to be lumped in with the package that Szeth alarmed Szeth.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nightblood can eat up Stormlight from external sources. Point being, even if Szeth is not (yet) a Surgebinder then perhaps Nightblood can be fueled simply by having charged spheres/gems nearby. It seems to me that Breaths are protected in some way. One person cannot forcefully take the Breaths of another, no? Even the Returned can't just take breaths from people- they have to be donated. And while Nightblood does suck Breaths directly from his wielder, there's some level of a "deal" that is made with he is drawn. Stormlight works differently. Just look at larkins, which can forcefully suck Stormlight out of a Surgebinder. Stormlight comes along easily and is easily absorbed by people who are able to take it. Both Stormlight and Breaths are investiture, but they work differently from one another. I don't see why Nightblood shouldn't be able to absorb his own Stormlight (from gems) just like a Surgebinder. No need for Szeth to act as a middle man.

Regarding "paragraph 3"... The quote you provided talks about how you can mentally break metal things down into smaller pieces. And with modern science in mind this totally makes sense. I just don't see how the same shouldn't be true for the Allomancer as well. Especially if you argue that the Allomancer's mass plays into strength. To be clear, the notion that you might be able to "turn off" some of your mass could absolutely be wrong. The thing I'm defending here is the idea that individual "particles" of metal matter are drawn to individual "particles" of your own matter. Or something like that. Just the way that gravity and electromagnetism work. We treat them as point forces for simplicity in many cases. But the reality is a bit more complex, mathematically.

@The One Who Connects It seems to me that a lot of your thoughts can be summarized by saying that "mass burn rate" affects LOTS of different aspects. That flaring and bursts affect mass capacity and range as well as strength. This may be true- I just don't think we have much proof either way. If it is true... If we can assume that all three of these factors are affected equally (and proportionately) then I'd slip in another B anywhere that M and R appear. So you'd have X = 1 - r / (B R), for example. And this is another good reason to normalize B. If they are all affected independently, then I guess you'd have to determine how they were for each person and have a different variable or each factor. I disagree that savanthood (or other alterations) can allow you to get more strength/force per kilogram of metal burned. I take this response from Brandon to mean that you can't "get more efficient" with your metals in any way. Accelerating a coin at 5g for 1 meter is going to cost a savant just as much metal as a trainee. I would definitely agree that savanthood (and even just practice) might increase range and mass capacity. I could also see how it might increase your max strength. But utilizing that higher strength is going to come at the cost of higher metal usage. Though I may be mistaken about all this? Is there anything to indicate that Spook gets more efficient with his Tin burning? Regarding the ability to balance on a small piece of metal I disagree that skill is enough to explain this ability. If you assume that forces are always directed through the centers of mass (of both Allomancer and metal object) then it's just plain impossible. Kelsier's explanation that you need to shift your weight around to balance is misguided. A person on a single stilt, which is always directed through the person's center of mass, cannot balance. If you can push on different parts of a metal object, as Kelsier demonstrates is possible, then this helps a little bit. But it's still not perfect. To balance on a coin you would have to keep your center of mass directly above the coin, within it's edges. This means very little wiggle room, and I don't think even supernatural balancing abilities are enough to explain it. It only makes sense if you can shift the force vector around so that it doesn't necessarily act through centers of mass. All of that said, I'm absolutely NOT arguing that Kelsier's skill (or possible savanthood) or Zane's spike are not involved with what they're doing. Skill/savanthood/spikes/etc.... these things all still matter. A new Coinshot isn't going to be able to balance like this right away. I'm just saying that we need a physical explanation for what they're doing that goes beyond the books' brief explanations.

Introduction After a conversation on Reddit (here) with /u/Phantine I've had to rethink a lot of my points from above. So let me first explain the foundation of my change in thinking... First, I now see how Newton's 3rd Law might not be violated after all. I was assuming that a typical Push/Pull involved a sustained force. If the force is not strong enough to knock you over while pushing a free coin then it is too weak to knock you over while pushing an anchored coin, and vice versa. But I’ve realized that Pushing a coin is not much different from firing a gun. We are dealing with a large force… It’s just typically applied for a very short duration. Long enough to get a coin moving fast, but not long enough to knock you over. A coin shot with the speed of a bullet is generally too far out of range before you get significant “recoil”. Vin was floored because the coin got stuck and she pushed too long- not because the physics suddenly changed. This doesn’t fit perfectly with how things are described in some cases. But it fits other situations much better, and it gives us the benefit of being able to trust and apply Conservation of Momentum (one of the most fundamental rules of physics). I was also assuming that the masses involved, both of the Allomancer and the metal object(s), didn’t play into the force calculation. The references here changed my opinion on the former while I now see that the latter is necessary logically. I was resistant to the metal’s mass factoring in because, taken at face value, it implies I can get incredibly large forces by pushing on incredibly large metal objects. You could launch yourself into space by pushing on a big chunk of metal, and that’s a bit too outrageous for me to assume. But the opposite brings problems as well… For example, let’s say I can Push with 100N regardless of metal mass. I glue a 1kg object to a boulder. I take another 1kg object, break it into 1000 pieces and glue it to an identical boulder. If I can push each piece with 100N then this means I can accelerate the second boulder 1000 times faster than the first! This makes no sense. My solution to reconcile these two problems is below. Lastly, I’ve changed my mind on how distance factors in. I definitely think the inverse square law doesn’t fit with the text. It implies that strength drops with distance off much much faster than we observe in the books. And while my e^-r concept above isn’t a bad thought, it is perhaps more complex than necessary given how little information we have. For now I’m going to assume that strength scales linearly with distance, up to a maximum range. I’ll do my best to be brief… I’ve already typed this out once and lost it, so I’ve run out of patience to explain every thought and support every assertion! That said, if you have any questions or issues with any point that I make then please reply and we can take the discussion further! The Theory Okay, so let’s talk about the new theory I’ve pieced together. I’ll share the equation first and name all of the elements that make it up. Then we’ll look at each of those variables in turn. At first we’ll assume we’re dealing with point forces on point masses, but at the end we’ll widen things up a bit. So we’ve got Allomantic Force as: F = A B m1 m2 X where… A = Allomantic Base Strength (Newtons per kilogram squared) B = Burn Rate (dimensionless) m1 = Mass of the Target Metal (kilograms) m2 = Mass of the Allomancer (kilograms) X = Distance Factor (dimensionless) And further below we’ll see a few more variables: r = Distance to the Target Metal (meters) R = Range (meters) M = Mass Capacity (kilograms) So now I’ll start from the end of the equation and work back towards the start… Distance Factor – X So if force is related linearly to distance then we have to have a maximum range at which force is zeroed out, which is where R comes in. The Distance Factor is simply X = 1 – r / R, which gives zero force at r=R and max force at r=0m. And of course X is limited to be greater than or equal to zero. So, with that in mind, we can actually rewrite our equation with this assumption as: F = A B m1 m2 (1 – r / R) Questions… Is there a max range involved? It’s hard to say for sure, from the text. But it isn’t hard to believe either. If not then we’d need another equation for X, and in that case my money is something like the e^-r concept mentioned in the first post. I’m also curious what affects an Allomancer’s max range. Is it the same for everyone? Does it vary with power level? Does it vary randomly? What level of variance is there? Does flaring increase it? Mass of the Allomancer – m2 See above for the references on why I changed my mind here. I don’t think it has significant impact on things however, because people don’t vary in mass by orders of magnitude. A lightweight Coinshot will be able to accelerate coins to deadly speeds just as easily as someone heavier. Mass of the Target Metal – m1 Again, see above for my logic on including this. But we need to talk about how to handle the two extremes. On one hand it doesn’t seem like I should be able to launch myself incredible distances with a simple Push on some large metal object. On the other hand, I shouldn’t be able to accelerate something faster just because I physically (or mentally) break up an object into smaller pieces. So what to do? It’s not perfect, but my solution is to assume that Allomancers have a “Mass Capacity”- some maximum measure of mass that they are able to push against at a time. Let us say, for example, that my Mass Capacity is 100kg. This means I can use my full strength on one 100kg item, on two 50kg items, or on one hundred 1kg items. (that is, the mass of the metal that I am mushing on- not including any other mass that may be “attached”) So what happens if I want to push a 200kg item? I can only push on up to 100kg, so I can only apply the same force that I did to the 100kg item. How about two 100kg items? I have to choose… Do I apply half of my strength to each, all of my strength to one, or somewhere in between? Again, it’s not perfect. But it does prevent severely overpowered strength when working with large objects while explaining what happens when we break items up into smaller pieces. This is even more important when we realize metal can be broken down into microscopic elements, but more on this later. Lastly, it explains why there might be a limit on how many things an Allomancer can deal with at a given time. While that can partly be explained by how many things he can pay attention to at once, I think Wax’s “Steel Bubbles” demand some kind of discussion on this point. While this is the best solution I’ve come up with so far, I’m not perfectly happy with it. I’ve explored the possibility that the metal mass is involved, but not directly proportional. For example, we could use something along the lines of -e^-m1 and set it such that m1=0 produces zero force. And then there is no maximum mass capacity while strength is still limited to some value. Once again, however, I feel compelled to take the simple option without further evidence. Questions… If there is some kind of mass capacity, a lot of the same questions arise here as we saw with Range (R). Does it vary? Is it related to strength? Does it change with flaring? You get the idea. I’m also curious to get an idea of what a typical capacity might be. Burn Rate – B Brandon has said that strength is directly proportional to burn rate. While it’s tempting to take this value as a measure of literal burn rate (in kilograms per second) I think it will make more sense to normalize things such that a dimensionless value of B=1 represents a person’s “natural” burn rate. Brandon’s comments suggest that more force means more metal burning, and that would require the actual mass burn rate to be a function of general strength as well as the distances and masses involved. And that goes beyond what we want here. Kelsier teaches that everybody naturally Pushes/Pulls with a given force, but that training and skill can allow for some deviation. It appears that they do this by controlling their burn rate to some extent. This also explains how flaring and Duralumin/Nicrosil bursts play into things. Questions… Once again, I’m curious how this changes between people. I’m also curious for an idea of how much it increases for flares and bursts. For example, does one person flare at twice their normal rate while another flares at 3x? I’m also curious about what the differences between Steel and Iron burn rates might be. Allomantic Base Strength – A I’ve normalized Burn Rate so that we can use this number to directly compare one Allomancer to another. We can directly test for this number. It would look something like this… Measure the Allomancer's own mass Test for the Allomancer's max range Set a 1kg metal sphere at one meter away Have the Allomancer Push/Pull and measure the force with a scale at their natural burn rate A = F / [m1 m2 (1 - 1/R)] With this number we can directly rank Allomancers according to their power level. From Point Forces to Bodies and Fields… This is going to take things beyond a simple equation, but it’s worth discussing I think. The books often talk about the forces being directed through centers of mass, but that raises an interesting question about how the forces are applied. It’s probably best to assume they are body forces, like gravity. As far as I can remember, there are no indications that high accelerations cause something like whiplash, and this is the easiest explanation. That said, there are also cases suggesting they might be surface forces (notably the coin that is flattened). Either way, we’re not dealing with a point force located at the thing’s center of mass- as if we are tying a t to the middle of the thing and yanking it around. The forces are distributed. Another important point is Kelsier’s fascinating feat in his battle against the Lord Ruler. He Pushes and Pulls on opposite ends of a single metal bar. This proves beyond a doubt that Allomancers have some level of ability to control what metals they are working with. They don’t just Push on whole objects. They can push on part of a metal object. And there’s no reason to assume that we can’t take this to the nth degree. Scientifically speaking, this makes sense. With our modern knowledge, you’d think it can be taken down to the level of individual metal crystals at least. While skill, strength, training, understanding, and mental capacity may all be involved in this, it doesn’t take away from the point. The point is that Allomancy doesn’t just work on whole “objects”. It acts on smaller elements. It’s basically the same thing as the story with gravitation or electro-magnetism. We can essentially imagine that an Allomancer has a field around himself, and that field interacts with bits of metal. The most notable oddity, of course, is how he has the mental ability to control which bits of metal that the field interacts with. But the mechanics are the same. So we’re not actually dealing with a point forces and point masses. Coinshots don’t apply a point force at the coin’s center of mass- they apply a field of forces across the entire body. Another interesting point is that the same must be true of the person’s own body. We see plenty of examples where an Allomancer seems to balance over a tiny point of metal. Zane’s balancing act is a particularly striking example. I think this implies that an Allomancer not only has the ability to determine which metal elements they affect, but also how the field extends around themselves. This might simply be a matter of “now utilizing” some of his own body mass. But it could also be a matter of something more obscure… like burning more metal “on behalf” of some body mass more than others. Or perhaps it’s even more abstract than that. In any case, it’s worth mentioning that this level of control exists, even if it isn’t easy to obtain or utilize for one reason or another. Mass and Investiture Lastly, I have to say something about Investiture. This absolutely must come up when we talk about Pushing/Pulling metal which is invested or metal which is imbedded inside of investiture. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how to address it exactly. Perhaps mass and investiture are proportionally related in many cases. Perhaps we shouldn’t really be talking about mass at all, but about investiture? Or perhaps investiture negates the effective mass that may be utilized. This is probably the best solution. A metalmind is hard to push because some of its mass is invested, and invested bits of metal are not affected by an Allomantic force field. You are left Pulling on a small fraction of the metal that you see, which means relatively little force. Metal imbedded is presumably invested as well, in some strange sense related to Hemalurgy. And I guess that metal inside of a body is immune simply because it is within a bubble of the person’s own innate investiture. Plenty of interesting questions to ask still… But I think this is a pretty solid theory to work with! I’m doing a Mistborn reread now, so I look forward to testing it out as best I can. And maybe digging up some details to fill things in a bit more and shed some light on the more vague aspects! Please comment if you have questions or support!

Well... I just spent a lot of time typing it up all nicely and then reloaded the page by accident when 90% done. Normally my life-saving browser add-on, Lazarus, pulls my butt out of the fire in these cases, but apparently it doesn't play nice with this forum. All gone. Maybe later...

Well, pistons are a little weird. The way you're thinking about it... You're imagining the piston extending at a constant rate, which is fine. But you have to realize that maintaining that rate implies different forces. It's really the same story. Imagine a piston with a motor from a cheap toy car. Stick it between yourself and a coin, and yes it will push the coin with very little reaction against yourself. Stick it between yourself and a wall? It's not going to knock you over. It's going to push against you and the wall as hard as it can (which isn't much) and then it's just not going to be able to extend further. Anyways, I'm going to see if I can't write up a new "theory" below sometime today...

Mistborn Secret History is only available in ebook format right now. It's a novella, so basically a long short story. It will be released in print this November as part of Arcanum Unbounded.

First, my latest wave of black options. All the same thing, just with the white text at different shades. The first is basically the same as the first one in the last post. The next two have it dimmed a bit more. I lean towards the 2nd or 3rd personally. I tried making the surge symbols darker, but they just look awkward being a different shade than the text beneath them. And if you darken that text then it's weird having the attributes/gems/essences a different shade. Just feels best to have all of these a similar shade. Okay, I must have just been confused here. Is that not correct? The Ars Arcanum relates the gemstones with an essence, at least (I assume) as far as Vorinism is concerned. Though to me the "soulcasting properties" suggests that the gemstone and essence are related. In fact, I assume that the essences were naturally drawn from the soulcasting properties of the gem. Or are you just saying that the gem/essence aren't related to the Radiant Order that they fall under? If that's all then I'm okay with it. Though happy to hide them if you'd like a version without. Interesting idea... I'd keep the order names on the edge, I think. But basically pull the order symbols out so they have more room to breathe. What would you put in the middle band that isn't already there? Other things from the Ars Arcanum chart? Associated spren that we know of? Or just stick with the info already there, just using the middle to hold the text-heavy bits without cluttering the order symbols? All this time staring at the image and I didn't notice! That's pretty interesting. Though i do think that, if there's a "Honor-Cultivation" spectrum of some kind here that the opposites ends would be Jezrien/Windrunners and Shalash/Lightweavers, which puts one woman on the Honor side and one man on the Cultivation side. First interesting point is that she is his daughter (I doubt EVERY opposite pair is related somehow). Second is that the Windrunner spren is literally "honorspren"... And they clash strongly with their "opposites", the cryptics. When you split the chart this way, the divine attributes on either side seem to fit better as well... Brave/Obedient seems more like Honor to me while Resolute/Builder sounds more like Cultivation.

There's plenty of mentions about how random the seasons are. Keep your eyes open and you'll see a lot more about it. The planet has no axial tilt (and a roughly circular orbit), so there are no seasons in the way that we think of them. They're more like weather patterns. I think it's a bit more exaggerated than this though... Summer seems to be hot and Kaladin mentions patches of ice on the ground (in one of his flashbacks) during winter. So it's not like they just have mild weather and then summer is "hotter than normal" and winter is "colder than normal". It seems to me that they're talking about significant changes in the weather, and it comes and goes in waves.

I see what you're saying, I think. But yeah, this is based on a simple misunderstanding of the physics. Perhaps one that Brandon himself made. I'll stick to the "arm" example. There's a bit of a disconnect with the example from one case to the next. You're imagining pushing the coin with a very light force... and then pushing the wall with a much greater force. Imagine you've got a coin sitting on a table and you push it steadily along to the other side with your finger. You don't have to push very hard, and you certainly aren't knocked over by it. The table is pushed up against a wall and so the coin is stopped when it reaches the edge. You keep pushing the coin/wall with the same level of effort that you did before. Just a light, steady pressure. What happens? Absolutely nothing, right? In both of those cases you were pushing with a relatively low force, and so you didn't experience much of a reaction. You can push against a wall hard enough to knock yourself over, of course. The reason you (probably) can't do this with a coin is just a practical issue. You're limited by how fast your arms are able to move themselves. The coin gets away from you before you are able to push on it with the same force. Throw a coin as hard as you can and you will probably barely notice the coin's own weight. The difficulty is in the throwing motion itself, because your arm can only move itself so fast. If this wasn't a problem, you could absolutely knock yourself over by throwing a coin. Imagine a robot who can push coins so fast that they accelerate to the speed of a bullet by the time the robot's arm is extended. Shooting a gun is essentially throwing a coin with a much stronger force, and is effectively the same thing as pushing the bullet with your hand. And the recoil can knock you right over if the force lasts longer than a fraction of a second. Maybe that helps a bit.

Opinions on this batch? I started from scratch to fix the quality and get some things lined up that were slightly out of whack. Order names now have some color and gem/essences are centered. I shrunk the surge symbols a bit more- definitely too small to make out some of their smaller details now, but I think maybe it's worth it to keep the clutter down. Got a few black ones where the small/white text is dimmed to varying degrees. Can't decide which one does a better job of being legible without cluttering too much. Maybe something in between?

Nah, I appreciate the feedback. I'm an engineer- not an artist. I might try to whip something else with a few of these adjustments... But I think I want to make it fresh from an earlier version. I feel like some of the quality has been lost from shifting and rotating things a lot as I've tried things out. I think I'll try out the gems/essences centered.

I'm on my second reread of WoR and have discovered that I was apparently never clear about what we learned about Stormseat and the Shattered Plains. So... DID something shatter the plains or not? Between Eshonai's revelations and events towards the end of the book, we find out that at least some of the plains are essentially ancient structures covered in crem. By the end of the book, I was assuming that ALL of the plains were explained by this. I was under the impression that each plateau was some multi-story building covered with millennia of crem, and that the chasms are where the streets once stood. A top comment in a Reddit thread not long ago argued that this was the case. But this is apparently wrong. Stormseat seems to have stood only at the center of the plains. In her first interlude, Eshonai narrates, "Much of the Shattered Plains had once been populated, but the largest city had been here at the center." So the edges of the plains are only outskirts, if not the site of other (smaller) cities completely. And the plains are huge. Even if you took away the need for bridges it would take you a great deal of time to walk across them. When you throw all of this together, there's no way that the Shattered Plains consists of large crem-covered buildings all the way across. So... are we still wondering what shattered the plains after all? I'm left with the assumption that the ruins are ON TOP of the plains. We see them in the uneven ground, occasional spires, etc. There may be plateaus where you walk on top of ancient buildings... But they only extend a little ways down into the ground- not all the way to the chasm floor. Does this sound right? Are there any interesting discussion threads about what shattered the plains? Do we know why the pattern formed? I can only guess that it was a case of cymantics in a real world situation... Some powerful force vibrated the entire area and only the ground in more stable areas wasn't reduced to rubble, with relatively few plateaus still standing. And what's the deal with the 10 craters on the outskirts? They don't seem natural, and are likely related.

Sorry, I missed this. Here's the link to the comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mistborn/comments/4xv1vd/anyone_like_talkingthinking_about_iron_and_steel/ (the post linked to here) If you're a physics nerd then you'd probably enjoy my conversation with Phantine at the top of those comments! It's a little long.

@Argent@Jondesu How about these? Notable changes: tried to fix the worst "I" kerns moved attributes up and split by a hyphen (fancier symbols seemed distracting to me) added divider line on black background to separate attributes from order names gemstone and essence just above the names on either side of the wedge surge symbols beneath the surge cleared out the shadow directly under the numerals

Sorry, wording must not have been clear. There should be, and I'll try it out.

Little update... You're all welcome to do whatever you like with them, including wallpapers/backgrounds. No need to give me credit. I'm trying out a version with the Surge symbols placed beneath the word. They have to be larger than I'd like so that they're adequately distinguishable, so I'm nervous it might be a little busy. But I figure it's worth trying out. @Argent: I like these ideas. I wanted to put the attributes on one line down below, but you can see there isn't much room. Feels like they make a bit more sense near the heralds, but I think this change might be worth it for the space savings. I wanted to stick the Gemstones and/or Essences in somewhere, so this would make that doable. You think Essences would be better than the gems? I suppose the gems are hinted at by the color already. I'll also work on a way to make the numbers more legible. Don't have an easy way remove the shadow unfortunately, since I just grabbed that bottom portion from the book headers and my skills are limited. So I'm gonna see how it looks with the numbers sitting on top of a circle or something. @Jondesu: The kerning bothered me too! I just liked the font too much to pass it up. I'll see what I can do about that. Probably not as tedious as some of the other changes I want to make.

Alright, I put together some rotated versions. I made another change while I was at it however... I decided that the "divine attributes" were perhaps more interesting than the numbers, so I made a swap there. I did hang on to the Vorin numerals, dropping them beneath the faces. If someone wants a rotated version of the originals (numbers rather than attributes) just let me know.

I like having "1" at the top, but I'll make a copy that's just rotated just a bit when I have a chance. I'll quote you so you see it. Might not be able to get to that this weekend though. Nope, he's Bondsmiths and Shalash is Lightweavers.

I made these and wanted to share. Comes in two flavors. That's all! Latest Revision: Old Revisions: 1: Original. 2: Ishar at top and divine attributes. Numbers removed, numerals moved. 3: Surge symbols, gemstones, and essences. Divine attributes moved. 4: Made from scratch for clarity and misalignment problems. Colorful order names. Minor moves and resizing. Multiple black options. 5: A few more varieties of black, just with different shades for the white text. 6: Fixed spelling of Pailiah

Hmm... Did you also post on Reddit? I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make with pushing things with your arm. The point of the hose example is that it's an example where you are experiencing a constant reaction force without moving. I think you are bothered by the fact that you don't provide the energy in this example, but that doesn't matter. A steelpush could also be compared to shooting a gun. Same thing... But the hose served my purpose better because it's a constant and sustained force rather than a single impulsive force. Using your arm to push something directly works as well, but its harder to visualize my point in that case, I think. Yes, you are directly exerting a force on some piece of metal. And there should be a reaction force that you experience. You feel the reaction even when pushing a small coin, it's just not very hard to brace yourself against it and you weigh enough that you generate plenty of friction to stay in place. The problem is that this doesn't change when the coin is suddenly pressed against the wall. Say I'm pushing a block across the ground with 10 Newtons of force. I push the block into the wall, but continue pushing with the same force. What happens? Nothing at all. I was experiencing a 10N reaction before, and I continue to. There's not some sudden spike in force when I hit the wall that would knock me over. Now... All of that said, a conversation on Reddit has actually changed my mind on some points. When I get my thoughts organized I'll have to come back in here and update everything.

I'm gonna give it to Eccentric Hero- that's close enough. It's Shallan laying on a rock by the shore, just before she wakes up.

It is supposed to be water, but you're looking from above. Man, I was afraid this one was too easy. If you guys want more hints just say the word. Don't want to give it away, but don't want to string you guys along because of my plain, nondescript drawing either.