kenod

So, the Radiant, what order does everyone think they are? Seems like they might have used both gravitation and elsecalling.

Their questions on law might point to a Skybreaker though, probably with a Fabrial for interworld travel.

Looking forwards to this one, just the sample chapters have so much juicy information and theory crafting potential.

14 hours ago, Sky Breaker said:

Option one: make a moon that is both tidally locked between scadrial and their sun make it just big/close enough to only let a good amount of sunlight through 

option two: tidally lock scadrial to its sun with the well of ascension in a habitable zone 

option three: just do to everyone what he ends up doing to the southern scadrians ( made them incredibly heat resistant 

Pretty sure tidal locks don't work the way you imagine them doing here.

If something is tidal locked to a different body it means their rotation around their own axis has a specific ratio to their rotation around the body they're orbiting (1:1 for the moon, iirc, but I think a couple others are possible too?). They still keep orbiting. What you're talking about for option 1 is placing the moon at the Scandrial-Sun L1 Lagrange point, but this point isn't actually stable, so the moon will start to drift with time.

Tidal locking the planet to the sun is going to give you a world where one end is basically frozen, one is heat-blasted into a desert, and any potential habital zone would be somewhere around the twilight zone, which I suspect might not be all that habitable anyway, since the temperature differentials would likely cause some pretty bad storms.

4 minutes ago, alder24 said:

Then there is another problem. By taking away that extra Preservation's fragment, people are severely damaged, and their health is drastically diminished. Hemalurgy always hurts. So while they are still alive, their soul has now a hole, and they are less invested which gives them problems with health and mental health. That's why I don't think Harmony would still allow to make new spikes even with this method, as it hurts people and leaves them scared.

To be fair, this could probably be fixed with gold medallions. That said, having part of your soul stolen probably still hurts a ton, and will probably result in some serious mental trauma even if the soul is fixed.

Just now, Frustration said:

I can agree with that to an extent, but at the same time that hurts the orders we haven't seen a lot, while the ones we have remain mostly unaffected.

Assuming in world knowledge is a limiter, Lightweavers, Truthwatchers, and Stonewards fall off pretty hard

They also fall off hard in-universe. Neither lightweavers or Truthwatchers are frontline combatants, they're support troops, focusing on healing, supply and infiltration, not straight combat.

For Stonewards, yeah, not much info. That said, we have already seen one of their main ability in action, if on different orders, so we can form a decent image. My issue isn't the fact that stuff is brought up we're not quite certain about, like what the most common uses of Tension are, my issue is that for some reason there's a straight jump to "this order can theoretically create nukes."

1 minute ago, Frustration said:

Then why wouldn't he have done that with Bondsmithing?

Unsure, but I do want to point that Bondsmithing has always been weird in general, and seems to have basically been designed to do strange things when necessary.

That said, to me the argument of "Honor's rules don't apply anymore" feels like a really flimsy reasoning to give a certain order an ability where it is specifically stated in the Arcanum they don't possess it.

That said, to me the basic concept of "no limits of in-world knowledge" feels like a really bad limit anyway, since most of things we bring up becomes conjecture on what abilities can do, with no actual confirmation that it's possible. In that case, we can just say that since each Surge is basically an in-universe fundamental force, Radiants can accomplish basically anything they want as long as they have enough Stormlight.

Just now, Frustration said:

That is true, but as the Stormfather said, Honor no longer lives to enforce his laws.

I'd say that in this case it's likely not Honor actively preventing things, but something deliberately made inherit in the magic system.

Also, if we're going with what a magic system could do in theory, Soulcasters should get access to stuff like antimatter, fissile materials and nerve gas, while Windrunners could go into space and drop meteorites on the planet.

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Willshapers can move between realms and have stoneshapping, which is implied to be able to set off nuclear explosions

Actually, the Arcanum specifically notes that Honor placed restrictions on their Axi manipulation specifically to prevent any radiants from setting off nuclear explosions. Microkinesis and potentially pre-Roshar humans could set off nukes, modern Surgebinding can't.

Which circumstances are we working with? Wide open fields, army battles, urban environments, trying to find and kill a specific target? Different Radiants excel in different circumstances, and have abilities tuned to those.

For example, you mention Bondsmiths, but how good are they in combat? They generally don't get access to really combat-focused powers, nor do they have shards. They're powerful, but they're generally likely to be more useful in support roles, not in direct combat.

At the same time, for urban combat, Lightweavers would fight through completely different means than a Dustbringer, Stoneward or Elsecaller. All of the later three would murder a lightweaver in an open confrontation, but a skilled Lightweaver would never get in an open confrontation, but would just disguise themselves as a civilian and stab them in the back.
Meanwhile, the Skybreakers and Windrunners would do poorly in this environment, since their primary focus is flight. Meanwhile, put all of these in an open field, and things change completely.

The issue is that each order of the Knights has a specific task in a war. And even the ones who focus on direct combat focus on different aspects of combat. It would be like asking if a WWII torpedo boat would be weaker or stronger than a T34 tank. It doesn't matter, because they do completely different things. Most orders would have trouble catching a Windrunner, but what would the Windrunner do against the Stoneward, Elsecaller, Lightweaver, and Willshaper who build their own fortified bunkers? The most they could do would be flying in and fighting them on the ground, in the area the other is strong.

If you want a direct answer to the question though, I'd say the Skybreaker and Windrunner have a battle between themselves, the survivor waits until everyone on the ground is dead, kills whoever survived with a surprise divebomb attack, lands to celebrate their victory, and then gets ganked by the Lightweaver who everyone thought had died at the start. The Elsecaller never participated, since they were smart enough to nope out of there into Shadesmer.

On 7-2-2023 at 9:26 PM, Mistchemist16 said:

2. Seeing these comments, I think I made one particular mistake regarding healing. I think the cognitive aspect revolves more around blocking access to certain injuries than outright adding new thing. Similarly, the WoB I used was more about duplicating an ability, not matter.  I guess you could use Forgery or even aluminum tricks to fix the spirit. But at that point, the hack becomes far less practical. 

It really depends. It likely wouldn't be able to add new abilities, but the form your body is healed towards can be influenced, not just by blocking certain injuries from getting healed. For example, a trans person would find their body slowly changing to conform to their gender identity, because that's their mental self image, and what the healing would move their body towards. Someone could in theory even use self-hypnosis to alter their cognitive image to utilize Investure healing to alter their appearance.

Just now, Frustration said:

Neither of the aimians are native to Roshar.

Ah, right, forgot about that, thanks.

To be honest, the biology of Rosharan species is kind of weird anyway. Most species seem to have six limbs, for one thing, (while Chasmfiends seem to have a lot more), but the sapient species, specifically the Siah Aimians and the Singers, both only have 4 limbs. This to me hints that the sapient species on Roshar might not be there through natural evolution, or at least had their biology altered, given that, based on real-world examples, species tend to be pretty far apart if they evolved different limb counts.

If the Siah Aimians and Singers did have their biology tampered with, or were created by Adonalsium, it wouldn't be that strange for them to have genetics compatible with humans, given that humans iirc were created by Adonalsium as well.

Just now, Frustration said:

I would have agreed, but as I thought about it, you need to say the ideals as well. You can live the third ideal for years, but until you say it, you're still second ideal.

True, but at the same time, it has been shown that backsliding far enough is enough to essentially kill the spren, even if returning to your oaths can revive them later on. It might not permanently sever the bond, but it can put the spren in at least a pseudo-dead state.

I'm not entirely certain you need to break your oaths by actively stating something, which feels rather weird. At most, I suspect it finalizes a breaking, creating a point of no return. I think that stating your breaking an oath is important more because of the Intent behind it, and how it formalizes your thoughts on it.

At the same time, it's good to also keep in mind that, even if Lightweaver Truths are harder to break than Oaths, what Shallan did probably would do the trick anyway. Unlike Oaths, which seem to revolve around realizing what you need to do or become, Thruths seem to revolve around realizing who you are, and seeing yourself clearly. Shallan, on the other hand, essentially repressed her memories. Stating the opposite of a truth wouldn't break it, in my opinion, since, at least if it comes from your own feelings, it'd still be a truth about yourself.
What Shallan actually did, and what I feel likely plays a bigger role, is the rejection of truths. She actively repressed her memories, the truth about herself. She hid inside a lie. I suspect that this was the real issue. While what she said might have played a role, I expect it wouldn't be because it happens to deny her truths, but because it states an intent she doesn't want the bond anymore, and that she doesn't want to face reality. She consciously rejected her Spren and the bond, actively saying she didn't want it anymore, and thus, she didn't have it anymore.

15 hours ago, Quantus said:

No, unless Connection is a new exception (which is possible), Feruchemy doesnt affect the outside world or any non-self targets.  A Connector can tap and/or fill a metalmind to change how they think and feel about the target (which can be an individual or homeland, etc) and maybe get all the inside jokes even without the memories, but it will not change how the target feels.  Or, as seems more common, you can increase your Connection to a Homeland and get the language and some cultural understanding, but it cant make you a  celebrity that is Loved by everyone else. 

Now, if you used an Ettmetal grenade to get around the fundamental target rules, maybe?   

Given this WoB I suspect that Connection is an exception which can influence outside things, in some way:

Quote

Dopetruffles

And finally, whether a duralumin compounder could break into a kandra?

Brandon Sanderson

Um... yes, possible, yeah.

WorldCon 76 (Aug. 18, 2018)

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/356/#e10524

Pretty sure a Lerasium spike steals passive abilities, stuff like strength, senses, mental ability, as well as probably the more magical passive stuff, like what the shapeshifters in Stormlight can do.

So burning is very likely much better, since using it as a spike can give you a boost to a specific ability, while burning it makes you into a Mistborn.

(To be honest, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that Lerasium is more useful for burning than Hemalurgy, it'd be weird if Preservation's own metal was a gamebreaker in the magic system directly opposed to his)

20 hours ago, SingleSoul said:

Yes, of course. Don't know how I forgot that scene 

But what got me going on this was Wayne saying that Wax crouches to get lift on his pushes. But I guess this just means that Wax has less practice with that kind of push.

This might also be because pushes still go both ways, and trying to push on something heavy from a different point of the body would put pressure on that body-part. Doing so with a bullet might not be that big a deal, but heavier lifting you'd want to do from your center of mass, to deal with opposing force better.

So, one big thing to note with the skimmer trick is the question of whether it's economically viable, not physically viable. I suspect people probably had the idea before, given how simple it is, but given that Ferrings are both rare, limited to a small section of the population, and limits on the amount of energy each can generate, you'll run into scalability issues very quickly. Add salaries, and coal plants will probably just be way cheaper and easier to scale up.

Until they also figure out a way to cheaply create mechanical weight-changing devices, perpetual motion machines are fun theoretical exercises, not something actually viable. It's like saying I managed to make a set of wheels that turn perpetually, and can have energy extracted, but I only have 10 of them and can't make more. Sounds really interesting from a physics perspective, probably research groups who'd want to buy them to analyze and try to replicate them, but no energy company is going to be interested, because those wheels could at most just power a single small factory. Actual windmills, the ones used during medieval times, would be more useful.

Edit: Nevermind, just found out someone made this point earlier as well.

9 hours ago, lacrossedeamon said:

Has there been enough time for convergent evolution to happen? We know a few worlds that are too young for even fossils to have formed.

A couple, but to my knowledge of the known Shardworlds only Scadrial was specifically created by Shards.

Yeah, I suspect that microorganisms feeding on investure is more of a case of convergent evolution, where, if energy in the form of Investure is abundant and accessible, life will evolve to use it as an energy source.

5 minutes ago, Ookla the Frustrated. said:

He also stored memories in the coin.

It is never mentioned anywhere that Kelsier can't use them.

Do we actually have evidence medallions can give Allomancy, or just Feruchemy? Because that would explain why he misses Allomancy but without introducing the question of why medallions wouldn't work.

2 minutes ago, CognitiveShadow said:

And before anyone asks, I think Hoid did something funny to get the memory out of Kelsier- tricked him and did some special Hoid shenanigans to steal the memory (and likely some other things as well). Heck maybe he even was able to replicate / forge the memory himself.

I actually wonder if this is a standard feature of currency in the South. It makes sense from a religion perspective, and it'd also make it quite a bit harder to fake currency if you don't have access to copper compounding.

On 20-11-2022 at 2:51 AM, lacrossedeamon said:

Check the Hemalurgic table again. Atium steals any one specific ability; Lerasium steals all abilities. 

Atium steals any power, Lerasium all abilities. These are both different things. Powers are the various, well, powers, you have, things involving active investure usage, like Allomantic and Feruchemical abilities, or Surgebinding. Abilities are passive things, like strength, intelligence, possibly special things certain species have, like Aimian shapeshifting.

Finally, there's also Necrosil, which steals Investure, which is the innate investure someone has, such as the strength of their soul, but iirc also things like Breaths.

15 hours ago, lacrossedeamon said:

And hemalurgy has progressed to where it doesn't cause death anymore.

Keep in mind that it still isn't going to be nice. You're still having a decent chunk of your soul ripped away, which is going to have serious effects on you. It's going to be quite a bit worse than becoming a Drab, most likely, and probably won't be pretty. I imagine stuff like serious health issues, both physical and mental.

9 hours ago, Elegy said:

I don't think we're at a point in the Cosmere where any galaxy-wide organization is actually influential.

Honestly, this is a pretty important thing. Most of what we've seen of Worldhopper organizations doesn't really have them interfere much in things, or only in things tangential with the main events on the planet. Even on Roshar, where they're the most active, they seem more interested in using the situation to accomplish their personal goals. We haven't really seen them influence events on a big scale, instead mostly just existing around the edges and doing their own stuff.

The two biggest direct influence we've seen from a secret organization were the Sons of Honor (which wasn't really a worldhopper organization, it was more of a local conspiracy which got hijacked by the other, older powers on the planet, and didn't really know what it was involved in), and the Set, which was more of a local conspiracy working to aid a foreign Shard.

Of course, if you count shard-led organizations as worldhopper organizations, Autonomy probably qualifies.