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cometaryorbit

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  1. cometaryorbit
    Interestingly, while it's not a glow exactly, soulstamping living things (but not objects) makes red smoke - per WoB this is the same "corrupted Investiture" red, since it's foreign Investiture messing with the soul.
  2. cometaryorbit
    Yeah, I think the (non-broken/Reod) Elantrians are most analogous to high power Awakeners who aren't Returned - holding enough Investiture to have obvious visible effects (color aura for Awakeners, glow for Elantrians) and "passive" benefits - the health boost from Breath is kind of similar to what Elantrians get - even when not actually using their magic system (Awakening or drawing Aons).
  3. cometaryorbit
    We see in SoS and BoM complaints about labor conditions in Elendel, and it seems implied to be similar to those in our world pre labor laws. But how did that happen? In our world, people moved to cities despite poor working conditions because pre industrial agriculture was really labor intensive (plus things like crop failures and famines happen, eg migration to US cities after the Irish potato famine). But we're told several times that crops in the Basin grow basically on their own, the climate is near perfect, etc. It actually seems like it would be really hard to industrialize there without fairly good working conditions, since the life of a farmer in the Basin would be so easy and pleasant compared to RL.
  4. cometaryorbit
    The idea that the new governor is a military man does kind of imply that the military is a established thing, not just founded since BoM... but how/why? They've been a single nation with no contact with/knowledge of any others in the world for three and a half centuries. What would a military be for? ...protection against koloss maybe? I think there's a throwaway reference to a koloss warlord somewhere in Era 2. EDIT: that's actually kind of weird in BOM too, with all the concern about a possible civil war: it kind of implies lots of people know how a military would work. If they've been one nation with no outside contact so long, I'd think how to run a military would be about as familiar to them as how feudal government worked is to us... maybe less so (we at least live in a world with lots of different extant political systems).
  5. cometaryorbit
    Sure, there's a lot of speculation, but a large* population has its own problems, not just transport, but unless all their infrastructure could be transferred with them they probably wouldn't survive; and a large warlike population with their infrastructure wouldn't be described as "begging" - the implication of the Eila Stele is that the humans looked helpless at first. *we don't know the population of modern Shinovar, but given its size and human-friendly ecosystem, and very long history of settlement (and lack of Black Death style epidemics on Roshar) it must be at least in the tens of millions, maybe even as high as 100 million depending on the type of agriculture.
  6. cometaryorbit
    Yeah, losing that ability might be the betrayal of "stone and wind" (maybe there was a Dawnsinger form of Windrunning as well as Stoneshaping)? I assumed that was a relic of the original treaty for humans to remain in Shinovar, where there's soil: "don't leave Shinovar and go to the stone landscapes" got corrupted to "don't walk on stones" as a cultural/religious taboo once knowledge of the historical treaty was lost. But knowledge of Dawnsinger Stoneshaping might also have contributed to the idea of stone as sacred.
  7. cometaryorbit
    Jasnah honestly strikes me as a female version of an old-style SF "competent man" stock character. Still, I don't know if she's really *unrealistically* good. She is definitely exceptional in a variety of ways, but I don't know that she's more so than some RL polymaths.
  8. cometaryorbit
    I don't expect them to stay together, but I don't think either of *them* expects that either. Jasnah must now know that Hoid is ancient and from off-world, and Hoid couldn't really be looking at this as a "forever" relationship unless he has a plan to make Jasnah immortal or nearly so. (Well, I guess the latter isn't really that implausible, Hoid could be planning to visit Nalthis once this war is over and get 2000 Breaths, or maybe he knows where another Dawnshard is...) Yeah, exactly. I think Jasnah is one of the very few people who has gotten to a point where she can talk to Hoid as an equal, within a normal human lifetime. Not in knowledge, surely, but in depth of self-understanding and so on. But I think they both also see pragmatic benefits in the relationship. Jasnah, as queen, is able to accomplish things Hoid otherwise couldn't, and Hoid has knowledge Jasnah couldn't otherwise obtain. (Which doesn't mean they don't care about each other - they do - but I think both are the kind of personalities who are very aware of the pragmatic side as well.)
  9. cometaryorbit
    Yeah, I kind of think the oaths will be broken somehow and neither side will actually win. Like, Moash tries to kill Dalinar during or right before the contest while still counting as part of Odium's forces, making Odium forfeit, but Taravangian-Odium uses whatever loophole he seemed to have noticed at the end of RoW, so T-Odium escapes but Dalinar doesn't become his servant.
  10. cometaryorbit
    The Light name is not the Intent. None of the three Shards' Lights are named after their Intent: Stormlight not Honorlight, Lifelight not Cultivation light, and Voidlight not Odiumlight (or Passionlight). Tower and Storm aren't even close to Intents. Yeah, I think Honor + Odium came out as Rhythm of War/Warlight because Honor's and Odiums forces are at war. If Odium's purest Intent, unfiltered by a Vessel, is hate/rage/conflict (without context) and Honor's purest Intent, unfiltered, is oaths and binding (without concern for what is sworn), I think a pure Honor+Odium Intent could be either Justice (if it includes both strengthening bonds and fury against oathbreakers) or Wrath/Vengeance (if its purely hate/fury directed at oathbreakers). I feel like it should be the first, since two Shards should give a broader Intent than one. The purest Intent of Honor +Cultivation might be something like Civilization, incorporating Cultivation of Bonds between people in society, between people and nature (agriculture) and natural law (science/technology).
  11. cometaryorbit
    I think it probably copies the memory (and that the coin medallion at the end of BoM is an example of this). It may be a RAFO because this 'copying discrete things through Compounding' process is the same one used to make medallions, except with nicrosil rather than copper.
  12. cometaryorbit
    That's what I mean by "the timeline is iffy". If Ash was born around the time of the exodus (either just before or just after) then she stopped aging, what, 30-ish years later? But the problem with that is, how did the humans go from a refugee population to able to win the initial war against a supercontinent wide species (it seems that the Fused are souls of those who lost and sought revenge; if the Singers had won initially there never would have been a Desolation cycle) in one generation?
  13. cometaryorbit
    To be fair, using breath is probably way more efficient (in terms of time to store in normal Feruchemy/quantity of metal needed in Compounding) than using gold to survive without air.
  14. cometaryorbit
    I don't think any of this is really confirmed. I agree the Everstorm is a piece of the Braize storm, but I took that as meaning that basically a chunk of the voidspren and Fused's prison was dragged over to Roshar - making the imprisonment moot, in terms of protecting Roshar, even if still technically in force. (Since their prison is now also on Roshar.) Right, but it was probably in place in the Cognitive by then. I took the "too late" comment about Taln to mean that the Desolation was already in some sense in progress before he returned.
  15. cometaryorbit
    Oh. Yeah. I definitely agree with that. --- I will have to re-read BoM and look closely at how Allik reacts to MeLaan. --- The Sovereign's priests: hmm, that is totally possible. I thought the implication was that they left to build the temple and died there, but that could be a red herring. --- One other possibility: a kandra could have ventured South on their own (say by taking an aquatic form to cross the oceans) sometime after the Catacendre, starting legends in the South. Not necessarily on Harmony's orders, either: did *every* kandra agree to work for Harmony? Even those Second Generation types like KanPaar who imprisoned Sazed? It's interesting that TenSoon seems to be the eldest kandra around...
  16. cometaryorbit
    There's a WoB on this... so far, at the current tech level of most planets, most people in the cosmere don't have enough context to know what "another planet" means really - they take it either as a religious/mystical claim or just a distant land. This comes up a bit in Stormlight Some people involved with House Venture were participating in trade through the Pits, but I doubt they had any real idea of where those people were from.
  17. cometaryorbit
    Yes, I think so. After Ruin attacks him and then is distracted by Vin becoming Preservation, Kelsier says the Beyond can't take him unless he wishes it to or he is completely destroyed. So anti-Investiture destruction would work, but not physical body death. (Stormlight spoilers)
  18. cometaryorbit
    If Chanarach really is Shallan's mother, then are her siblings really her full biological siblings? Cognitive shadows having children seems weird enough that that would be odd... ...otoh Heralds seem to have 100% human bodies, unlike Returned, so maybe not. The main thing I like about the idea is that it explains why so much weird stuff (Ghostbloods, Skybreakers, etc) is going on with Shallan's family - a Herald is a reasonable common cause for everyone to be interested. The main thing I dislike (assuming Herald bodies are really biologically 100% human) is that it makes the whole "Everstorm bypassing the normal Desolation mechanism" thing more confusing.
  19. cometaryorbit
    That wasn't Harmony just going crazy with the new power, Kelsier asked him to heal Spook's savantism damage and to make him Mistborn while he's at it. (Because "they'll need some Allomancers in the world that comes" - I guess Kelsier thought the Mistings that survived, like Breeze, might not supply enough Allomantic genes with no Mistborn around.) I can see a couple of possibilities. - TLR moved one or more of the newly transformed First Generation Kandra to the Southerners to keep an eye on his "control group" immediately, while he still had the Well's power. They stayed in the South permanently and haven't had contact with the Basin kandra, so the Basin kandra don't know about the South. - TLR moved one or more kandra to the South later, for the same reasons. That would be tricky with the conditions in between, but maybe not impossible with TLR's abilities. (TLR himself could have made the trip with compounded steel and gold, the question is whether he could keep a kandra alive.) - Harmony moved one or more kandra post Final Ascension but kept it secret from the Basin kandra. --- I *think* the implication with Harmony undoing the ash physiology changes but not the Southerners' lack of cold tolerance is that Harmony undid the changes TLR made (using the 'memory' Preservation's power had of past actions) but the Southerners' changes were "natural". That doesn't make a lot of sense to me in RL evolution terms, but it seems inevitable since by WoB TLR didnt change them genetically.
  20. cometaryorbit
    Yeah - this is one of several really subtle clever bits I missed when I first read. I know I've seen this mentioned before, maybe in the annotations? One that really floored me when I re-read book one is the comment that Kredik Shaw means Hill of a Thousand Spires "in the ancient Terris language"... I was like, how did I miss that as a clue that TLR was Terris?
  21. cometaryorbit
    That's how I read it. It's integrated enough to give the power but not integrated enough to be hereditary. There must be some hereditary effect, since koloss-blooded exist (as the first WoB says), but maybe it's not directly related to the individual powers given by Hemalurgy (per the later WoBs). Koloss are 'Hemalurgic constructs', a different 'species' in a sense, not just humans with new powers. So are Inquisitors. So maybe the idea is that Inquisitor/human hybrids have some effects/differences from 100% human, but it's not "greater chance of Allomancy" (some would be Allomancers anyway since Inquisitors are generally made from Seeker Mistings, thus "it happens sometimes").
  22. cometaryorbit
    I wonder if "I am Unity" is something from Dalinar's future acting through the timelessness of the Spiritual Realm while the Realms are united. Dalinar doesn't hold a Dawnshard now, but perhaps he will in the future. The Command of the Dawnshard known to bind all creatures voidish or mortal could be "Unite". And perhaps- since holding a Dawnshard is referred to as "becoming" the Dawnshard - the noun form of that Command might be used as a name/title for the holder? Perhaps Rysn could now say "I am Change"?
  23. cometaryorbit
    My main issue with the theory (which does look more plausible now) is that it seems that with the Everstorm allowing the Fused to be reborn directly, no Herald breaking is necessary to explain the Desolation. I always took "Taln didn't break" to mean that once Odium bypassed the Oathpact, Taln just got sent back to Roshar as a result- his return was an effect this time, not a cause.
  24. cometaryorbit
    The "...Herald" bit is interesting. So, is the Stormfather lying through his teeth here (which would support the Stormfaker idea) or does he want to make Gavilar something kind-of-a-Herald-yet-not-quite (which might support real Stormfather, depending on the details)? One idea that occurs to me is that the SF intended he would become a Bondsmith first, like Dalinar, then use his Bondsmith powers to re-build the Oathpact somehow centered on himself. So... sort of a Herald but not exactly like the existing ones. But he didn't try this with Dalinar since once the Everstorm was active the Oathpact was useless?
  25. cometaryorbit
    Hmm, if that means only two planets were settled after the Shattering, Roshar would have to be the other one, so all non-Scadrian humans would have to be Yolen descended. I guess I originally read that as only two "de novo" creations of humans by Shards post-Shattering, not including interplanetary migrations. And, that says "places" not "planets" so what about Silverlight? Was it pre Shattering? Maybe it does mean de novo creations. Sure, but if dozens of planets were settled from Yolen, that knowledge must have been *relatively* available. I suppose that Ashyn could have been a cut-off "lost colony", but widespread knowledge of worldhopping would suggest IMO more interplanetary contact in early eras than we see evidence of. EDIT: also, probably not 3000 years. If the Shattering was 10,000 years ago and the Fused originated 7,700 years (=7,000 Rosharan years) that's 2,300 years, minus however long from the Shattering to settlement of Ashyn, minus the time it took to discover interplanetary travel, blow up Ashyn, travel to Roshar, make a deal with the Singers, expand beyond Shinovar, and kill the soon-to-be Fused in the first war. There's something iffy about that timeline imo; the Heralds apparently weren't Heralds until the Fused appeared, but a refugee population expanding enough to feel that Shinovar (which is huge!) isn't enough, and try to claim *much less hospitable* lands, sounds like more than one generation.
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