cometaryorbit
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Everything posted by cometaryorbit
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I know we have WOB that Cultivation is alive, but are we actually sure that she is currently, actively opposing Odium?
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Are we sure of this? Animals have a Spiritual aspect (though probably less powerful than humans), but I don't know if they have Innate Investiture the way Cosmere humans (with the possible exception of Drabs) do.
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I think it is the phenotypes. "Interfere with" to me implies that the Feruchemy genes are still there but their action is impaired, not that they are actually being destroyed.
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It's a lot easier just to store down to the point that your weight (plus clothes and metalminds) is low enough that your terminal velocity is harmlessly slow. Sazed does it in Well of Ascension.
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Quite possibly. One of the Heralds threatened to destroy all the Surgebinders if they didn't follow rules, so it's quite plausible they were powerful or Invested enough to register on Odium's radar, even though normal humans wouldn't (or even creatures with a bit more 'magic' to them like the Aimians with their backwards-shadows suggesting a Shadesmar connection)..
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I agree that the vision is the strongest evidence against this theory. However, if it's true, Honor is a biased source. I question Odium's ability to destroy the planet, actually. Even Splintered, power isn't gone. Just as Preservation's near-mindless power still opposed Ruin, I think Maybe they did say that, and people took it as heresy, and that's part of why they are now reviled? More likely, though, they didn't quite understand the whole picture, and thought that with Honor gone there would be no more Desolations. No... I think the Heralds' return is definitely involved. But that doesn't mean that it's 100% of the story, or that Odium doesn't have other "windows of action". Because he's imprisoned on Braize. Apparently he can only act on Roshar at specific times (but not limited to Desolations, since Honor's Splintering wasn't during one).
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Yeah, Stormlight healing won't keep you young for the same reason that (Mistborn spoilers) OTOH, Elantrians don't seem to age, and people with the Fifth Heightening don't, so being highly-Invested can do that.
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I dunno. (Shadows of Self) Rashek suppressed a lot of knowledge, but the existence of pocket watches means that there's a good amount of skill in making moving parts. Once the ideas were out there, I think they could build up to complex applications of them faster than we could.fairly quick. Now, their population was cut down to a very low level by the Catacendre, so fewer inventors, fewer minds to work on and improve things. But they got a lot of the ideas from Sazed. And the old skaa forced labor based economy was completely destroyed, so that wouldn't hold back their modernization. (The Ancient Romans actually knew of a primitive type of steam engine. Some people have speculated that the reason they didn't industrialize was because of their slave-based economy. I don't know if their metallurgy would really have been up to it, though...) EDIT: They weren't up to AoL level, maybe 80-100 years away. Early 19th century, pre railroad era probably means 1800-1830; people were experimenting with locomotives all through that time but things really took off in the 1830s. AoL tech is supposed to be ~1910, but behind on electricity, ahead on metallurgy.
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Sure, if he went berserk. But if he was going to resist (which he wouldn't) he wouldn't do it that way. Dalinar's a Highprince. He has an army - an army that's loyal primarily to him, not to Alethkar. If Dalinar resisted Sadeas, it would be a civil war, not Dalinar running around killing people personally. Dalinar was pretty respected as 'the Blackthorn', and if he looked to be going warlord again other highprinces would take his side. And that's why Dalinar wouldn't do it. Thus, Adolin is worried because Dalinar would accept arrest rather than tear Alethkar apart.
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Well, Nightblood causes people to kill each other fighting to pick it up, and if they do they usually kill themselves. Still, the way Nightblood's treated as this ultimate nightmare weapon always bothered me too. Seems like any archer could safely kill the wielder of Nightblood from out of reach, even out of range of the murderous-compulsion effect. So if Nalan thinks Szeth can fight Honorblade wielders (and assuming he knows what he's doing) it must grant either Surges or some comparably powerful abilities.
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If they learned as much as I suggest, they'd definitely have known that the Last Desolation wasn't really final. Yeah, there were Desolations before KR - but Heralds were apparently teaching & leading humanity. My argument would suggest that if the humans had told the Heralds to go jump in a lake and 'stayed out of it', Odium/the Unmade/the Voidbringers would have ignored humans as irrelevant. If this theory is true, Odium's goal in the current Desolation is killing/Splintering Cultivation - the only whole Shard left Invested in Roshar. If the KR and humanity in general stayed out of it, Odium would just kill Cultivation (and likely Stormfather, Nightwatcher, and Taln) and leave everybody else alone. There could be collateral damage, but Honor's Splintering doesn't seem to have left a mark as a major historical event, so not that much. It might be too late for that with the Everstorm activated, though. It might well keep destroying even if Odium didn't really need it anymore. Still, the Everstorm alone is unlikely to doom humanity or civilization on Roshar. IMO Taravangian knows this. His ideal outcome was for the Parshendi to be driven to extinction before they summoned the Everstorm. But now, his plan is to keep humanity out of the fight, hunker down and take shelter - that's why he needs to be king of everyone, and why weakening kingdoms by civil war isn't a problem to his plan, likely even a benefit.
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Diferences between splinters and shards
cometaryorbit replied to hellfun's topic in Cosmere Discussion
That WoB could also mean that anyone can pick up a Shard - i.e. for each Cosmere individual, there's at least one Shard they could take up. Not anyone can pick up any Shard. Kelsier was closer to Ruin, so he needed help to take up Preservation. -
Hold the secret that broke the Knights Radiant. You may need it to destroy the new orders when they return. - WOR Chapter 84 epigraph (decoded) Now, as the Windrunners were thus engaged, arose the event which has hitherto been referenced: namely, that discovery of some wicked thing of eminence -- WOR Chapter 38 epigraph These epigraphs strongly imply that the Recreance was precipitated by the KR discovering some terrible fact. It doesn't seem to have been tied to any corruption that may have crept in to the Orders (the taxes for travel through Urithiru, etc.) Now, here's something anomalous. The Desolations devastated Roshar, killing something like 90 percent of the human population and knocking technology back to the stone age, at least sometimes. Yet when Honor was Splintered (after the Recreance -- he remembers it in the visions) there seems to have been no such cataclysm. Aharietiam is still seen as "the Last Desolation", which it wouldn't be if another apocalyptic event had occurred since the Recreance. Similarly, Odium Splintered Devotion and Dominion on Sel. But humanity on that planet survived; he didn't destroy the planet, depopulate it, or warp it into some kind of a hellscape. So why the devastating, lethal Desolations on Roshar before the Recreance? Because humans were fighting on Honor's side. Odium doesn't really care about killing humans, except incidentally to getting at the Shards; nothing much below the power-level of a Herald registers on his "radar screen" Therefore, my proposal for the Secret That Broke The KR is: Honor's been feeding us into a meat grinder for thousands of years to protect Cultivation and a couple of alien gods we'll never see. If we let Odium win, nothing bad really happens to humanity. Honor betrayed us. Our spren have been in on it, all along - they're pieces of Honor. So let him die.
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Interview: Apr 15th, 2013 Reddit AMA 2013 (Verbatim) Satsuoni () From which stage of development does human embryo on Scadrial gain Hemalurgic potential? Brandon Sanderson Conception. The spiritweb bit that contains/spiritual DNA that codes for the specific power ("I'm a Thug/Tineye/whatever") as opposed to the "I'm Snapped" crack in the spiritweb. Know, no, but I do have a half baked theory. I think it's a matter of critical thresholds. While Allomancy runs in families, specific powers don't seem to; there aren't Thug or Soother lineages. And everybody has the "seeds of the Metallic Arts". So I'm thinking everybody has some bit of theoretical Allomantic potential of each type. Spiritweb "channels" for each? But people have different degrees of Preservation in them. Most people don't have enough to Snap as anything (unless maybe the Mists get involved). Some people have a little more, and when exposed to trauma, one of the "channels" activates. Presumably people are - more or less randomly - just a tiny bit stronger in one potential than the rest, so it activates ... then all the power runs through that channel so nothing else activates. But if you have more than the Mistborn-threshold, when you Snap, there's so much Preservation bouncing around that everything activates at once. Whatever channel activates first, it can't carry it all, so the Preservation just sloshes around and hits everything.
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Yeah, I'd imagine it's because Adolin was afraid Dalinar would go along with it because of his honor, rather than because they could actually do it by force. (Dalinar could probably take over the kingdom if he really wanted to...)
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Arrows and early firearms weren't very effective against good plate armor of the say 1350-1500 era, but that was far from available to everyone. That armor was really highly developed stuff. I can't see a Parshendi's chitin armor being anywhere near as capable. I think the lack of crossbows is a combination of a generally low tech level (barring fabrials and such) and tactics focused on close combat, probably somewhat warped by the importance of Shards.
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I think there are two different things going on in an Allomancer's spiritweb. Crack in the soul, letting in investiture. This forms at Snapping. (Feruchemists might not have this, since they don't Snap.) The actual power, which is what is stolen by Hemalurgy. Feruchemists definitely have this. I believe you can Hemalurgically steal Allomancy from a pre-Snapped person, Vin's sister probably was. So the power is there in the spiritweb before the crack forms - it just can't be used until the Investiture can get in. So I think a Mistborn has one crack and sixteen-plus powers in their spiritweb. That's why hemalurgy steals one power at a time. The act of spiking damages the soul, so you don't need to steal the crack.
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I agree that "no room in the spiritweb" is likely why Mistborn and such don't get perks. I'm not sure it's a matter of soul-cracks though. I think the powers themselves are found on the Spiritweb - that's what Hemalurgy steals. I don't think a Mistborn has 16 separate soul-cracks for the 16 powers: they only have to Snap once. And it's really more than 16 powers... what about all the god-metal alloys? Also, Vasher can apparently use his Nalthian-Breath soul-crack to inhale Stormlight (though not Surgebind). I think it's one-soul-crack-per-person needed regardless of the number of powers. I don't think that's quite all of it, though... I feel like the reason why you get one Allomantic power or all of them, but never two or five (barring Hemalurgy), is somehow related.
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I dunno... Rosharans don't have conventional guns to compete with, and guns became dominant in Earth warfare before they had muzzle velocities anywhere near that high. Black powder muskets had muzzle velocities around the speed of sound (~300 m/s) or below it. And it depends on what you are shooting. Black powder muskets were just balls - arrows were lethal at like 50 m/s. EDIT: For that matter, do Rosharans even have crossbows? They have bows, but the Alethi warrior tradition doesn't seem to have either an English/Welsh style longbow tradition or a Mongol style horse archery tradition, so their archery probably isn't as good as our best Earth historical examples. So a fabrial-gun's performance wouldn't need to be very impressive at all to be the best available ranged weapon.
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Parshendi, Voidbringers, and Chasmfiends
cometaryorbit replied to Argent's topic in Stormlight Archive
True. Are they Voidbringers? The Midnight Essence apparently isn't, it's one of the Ten Deaths... maybe the Thunderclast is another of the Ten Deaths (if they match the Ten Essences then Midnight Essence would be Vapor (smoke) and Thunderclast would be Talus (stone). I don't think so... Dalinar's vision shows the thunderclast formed from spren animating rock. -
Parshendi, Voidbringers, and Chasmfiends
cometaryorbit replied to Argent's topic in Stormlight Archive
There's at least one reference to Shardblades being designed to fight giant monsters. So whether chasmfiends are involved or not, I'd expect Odium's forces to include a lot more than Parshendi forms. I'm not sure what the definition of Voidbringer is though - the Midnight Essence apparently isn't a voidbringer. -
Ah - thanks. I never saw that one. I wonder if there's a connection between Vedel and the Veden people.
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I think Talenel is his real name. Talenelat is an altered version that the Vorin religion uses because they find symmetry holy. Same for Jezrien -> Jezerezeh, Nale/Nin -> Nalan, Ishar -> Ishi, etc. The 'Elin seems to be a title, I think.
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Theory: There are 10 types of "proper" Fabrials
cometaryorbit replied to cometaryorbit's topic in Stormlight Archive
I don't think that control is always there. On Roshar, Honor is dead, so who's actually controlling it? Stormfather is Tanavast's or Honor's Cognitive Shadow and probably Honor's largest Splinter, but we see in WOR he can't prevent Nahel bonds from forming. (Major Mistborn First Trilogy spoilers) Also, while Surgebinding seems to be primarily Honor's system due to the whole Oath/Bond thing, Cultivation is involved too. Pattern & Wyndle seem to be primarily of Cultivation. Shallan doesn't even use Oaths, just truths. -
Personally I don't think that god-metal mistings and god-metal-alloy mistings are things that exist 'naturally'. Atium (and presumably malatium) mistings existed in Mistborn Era 1 because Preservation had messed with the system to get rid of atium. I don't think any more atium or malatium mistings were born after Harmony undid that. So I don't think lerasium mistings exist, and I don't think any new god metals like harmonium or 'trellium' would produce mistings.