Bigmikey357

For me personally, I both like and am frustrated by Shallan in equal parts. I like the quips and hate the coping mechanism. I like her ability to be competent despite her issues and that she's strong in a non-traditional way, it annoys me when she acts her age which is unfair but a valid opinion. I'm not defending her against those who hate her, it's probably hopeless to try and change anyone's mind about her. What I will say is that she's falling in line with the series structure so far. WoK was Kaladin's book. He in many ways was a perfect fantasy protagonist, one who many people fell absolutely in love with, me included. He made me want to curb stomp him in book 2 because he backslid in many ways, ways that while realistic still made me loathe reading his chapters. WoR was Shallan's book and she showed us how awesome she could be, how effective she could be even without experience, her remarkable potential. OB exposed her and many times it was painful to read when her chapters came up. I expect Dalinar to get similar treatment in RoW. Why do I bring this up? Because their narrative paths seem to display a singular theme. Just being awesome and doing awesome things doesn't mean your issues automatically disappear. It takes work to fix your issues. Kaladin constantly must fight depression and his prejudices. Shallan struggles with her identity like many young women, like Vin had to once upon a time. Dalinar has to learn to let go and how to reconcile his past with his present. It's good writing because it makes you feel things and feel them strongly. Whether you love or hate a character in this series you will have a strong emotional reaction that colors your perception of the entire series.

In a sort of paradoxical way, the vehement reaction to Shallan the OP displays and others share kinda highlights how good a character Shallan is. If she were blah it would probably take away from SA.

I think if we're using any premodern Terran army in our scenario I don't believe we should pit them against an entire Shardworld. Cosmere planets are not monolithic and most of the terrestrial armies we could mention never conquered the entire world. The Mongols and the Romans came damnation close so they'd get a mention but nobody without nukes has a puncher's chance of toppling an entire planet in the Cosmere. So let's say, just for an example, pit the Mongols against Azir, see what we get from there. Imo that also takes off the table various nuclear options on the Cosmere side. So no Rashek or Kelsier breaking the flow, no flipping Dawnshard or Heralds, the Evil doesn't make an appearance on Threnody. The Elantrians are a nuclear option onto themselves, so maybe the Terrans could fight the Rose Empire or something.

As to the question as to whether Dalinar Ascended with a capital A, that is a question I'm sure we all would like the answer to. We must read future novels to determine this. The beads are only a tiny portion of Preservation. The power itself is infinite, and the Vessels have some volition as to how they manifest their power. For Leras it wasn't just the beads but the mist covering the planet and the Shardpool at the Well of Ascension. Atium was artificially rare, there was much more than what was circulating among the population. It took 300 people hours and hours of continuous burning to exhaust the stockpile, this considering that one could burn a bead of Atium the size of a marble in less than a minute.

Occupation is always more difficult than annihilation. And a portal leading back to Terra is going to be problematic, especially in Roshar's case. Of all the Cosmere planets they best understand the scientific method, physics, chemistry, energy transference and the interaction of forces. Assuming the Rosharan people don't succumb to disease they have the most to gain from a look see of our scientific texts, as well as ways to employ them that would devastate any force coming to bear against them. How much faster does fabrial tech develop with about 500 years of physics knowledge injected into the public consciousness? If Jasnah got ahold to our texts they'd be creating H-bombs within the month to throw against our beachhead. A similar issue comes with Scadrial, although their development would likely lean towards metallurgy and ballistics. But they don't yet have mass production in their toolbox. Terra would be foolish to give them time to acquire it.

And you can't shoot someone outside your time bubble from inside it.

The Lightweaver problem is the same as the Kandra problem although to a lesser degree. If we know that people can perfectly mimic others it's going to be difficult to detect them. Our strategies aren't foolproof but we are trained. For instance, we are trained in something called OPSEC, or operations security. What that means is basically we aren't just slinging information around. You know as much as you need to know to do whatever your task is. And you don't poke around trying to get information you don't need. You don't speak about your mission in public places or detail to others what your mission is or when it's supposed to take place. And everyone watches each other for changes in behavior. It's amazing how many mundane spies are caught in this manner. I assume it's going to catch a few supernatural spies as well but of course not foolproof. Basically, the better the Lightweaver the less mistakes they'll make, therefore the harder they will be to catch. And of course we have no defense at all from anything coming from the CR.

There's a way around that. An easy fix. Draw the Fullborn to a known location, maybe a garrison or some other high value target. Bomb the holy storms outta that location as soon as he arrives to start the slaughter. Have the jets on standby at another location. When the aluminum rain drops get the birds in the air and let them add to the tapestry. You know if you succeeded if the guy doesn't get up and immediately come after you. Repeat as often as necessary. I understand your contempt for TLR but the reason people keep pushing him into the scenario is that he's the only one with any real military experience. Kelsier was a thief and an eventual revolutionary. Marsh was a failed revolutionary, then a tool without any volition fighting against a mostly defenseless populace. TLR on the other hand conquered the world in about 200 years of near constant warfare. What Vin ultimately killed was the shell of a powerful man, one who'd been chewed on by Ruin for a millennia. So if you can't depend on a guy like that, the man Rashek used to be then Scadrial really is screwed.

Forward Observers are no problem at all. Drones and Radio. The Fullborn will have to stop sometime. And steelrunners still have to play nice with Newton, meaning they aren't as fast in the air as on the ground. So make it so the guy has to get airborne to knock out certain targets. The shell provides the shrapnel. It's driven by the high explosives. So make the shell aluminum. Use drones as FO, like we do now. Use area weapons. No matter how fast the Fullborn is he ain't the Flash. He isn't escaping damage if someone were to rain down destruction over a grid square or 3. And they can fall into traps. OP, but not impossible to kill. Conjoined fabrials (spanreed) acts just like quantum spin particles. One effects the other regardless of distance. @Isilel I considered some of these factors when building my scenarios and I agree that they must be factored in for any coherent discussion. Environmental conditions are always going to be a factor in an invasion. That being said, the Terrans must get to the Cosmere somehow. In order for the scenario to work we must assume that Earth puts together an invasion force capable of assaulting a planetary population, including adequate resupply and support. A squad of marines ain't taking over nothing over a planetary scale. Intelligence gathering goes both ways. The longer the conflict the more aware each party becomes. But first there will be culture shock. Scadrial Era 2 and Roshar are the only Cosmere societies that have a chance of true understanding of what we bring to the table tech wise, every other Cosmere world is much less advanced. Terrans will have trouble getting Cosmere awareness. However, as the invaders it would be lax of them not to do their flipping homework, and thus they're going to have a head start. They have to experience the magic to truly understand it but I'd expect them to at least take into account Scadrial's bad air, Roshar"s extreme oxygen content or Sel's higher gravity and do things to mitigate these factors before they ever fire a shot in anger.

With aluminum.

@SwordNimiForPresident We've seen Elantrians on other planets in the Cosmere. We've only seen them use their magic on Sel. We've only seen their magic at full power near their magic city. I don't know how effective they would be off world but I'm assuming not very. And maybe the Elantrians can undue damage of a nuclear weapon. They cannot bring back the people it would kill. Now if Elantrians weren't Geographically locked in power I could see them ruling the Cosmere against all comers. But with their limits the planet is extremely vulnerable. For the super Rare Fullborn, I think you might be overestimating their admittedly broken power set. Aluminum blocks Investiture. Fire melts even Invested metalminds. I'm not even saying the first shot kills the guy. As long as you have weapons that can hit the guy from miles off you keep pounding him. You keep tossing aluminum at him, keep that rate of fire going. He will go down eventually. The more Fullborn there are the harder the strategy but it can be done. Rashek knew it could be done, else he wouldn't have suppressed knowledge of firearms so completely. In no scenario are you one-shot killing a Fullborn, but continuously bombarding the guy with planes flying 5 miles up, hitting him with artillery bouncing berries with aluminum shrapnel that annihilates grid squares at a time, every structure rigged to explode, thermite, napalm, it's death by 1000 cuts. And once the Fullborn fall the rest of the planet stands no chance. As I look at it, Roshar stands the best chance of standing up to modern Terra and the havoc we can bring. There defense does not rely on one or two ridiculously powerful individuals like Scadrial or one city with people who aren't even close to as powerful when they stray from their amplified home. They can counterpunch with things we have no defense for (Cognitive Realm, Soulcasting, ect), and they have command over physics that is absolutely terrifying for a modern day person who is tasked to fight them. They have limited instantaneous travel, faster than light communication, and the terrain control that would make our vehicles useless. And if Jasnah and friends get one look at a science library from our world I'm not sure that there's anything we could do to them. We have one major advantage over Roshar. Disease immunity. If they're calling a common cold a plague I don't know how they deal with our true whammies. I'm talking malaria. Cholera. Bubonic plague. Ebola. Stormlight healing beats some of this stuff but not all. And again, no protections for the average joe. The Listeners wouldn't be effected by the natural stuff but something could be cooked up just for them as well. Beating Roshar means crippling their war machine before it has a chance to start up. Send in the plague carriers to the most populous cities in Roshar, fast actors like Ebola first.

With the use of nuclear and biological weapons the only thing that allows the Cosmere to survive a modern army is Shardic intervention. Maybe we can't kill Elantris with nukes. That's a debatable topic but let's say we can't. No one else is protected and the Elantrian cannot venture far from their power generating city. If we were to make the rest of the planet uninhabitable and kill all the people that could have been taken by the sheod then you basically have 10,000 Elantrians, a glowing city, and a planet with a barely surviving poisonous atmosphere. So they get pissed off. So what? They can't hit us at home in retaliation. The Fullborn problem is a bit different. If I commanded the Terran forces I'm playing keep away. Marching up to Kredik Shaw with a massive army is suicide. Facing Fullborn I'm making many many automated weapons with plenty aluminum. I'm dropping aluminum bombs from the upper limits of the atmosphere, aluminum artillery pieces. Any soldiers those Fullborn will see will be surrounded by many, many traps, tripwire, mines. Fire and aluminum eventually kills those monsters. The problem with these scenarios isn't necessarily if we could win them, it's why we went in the first place. If our aim is just to wipe a Cosmere planet out of existence then these plans work fine. If we'd like to someday occupy these places then the measures we'd have to take to negate the most powerful magic users leave most of the planet uninhabitable, thus defeating the purpose. We'd win the war but lose the peace. So are we all thinking Roshar, Nalthis, Taldain, First and Threnody would be pushovers?

The end state is important but so is the starting product. Remember Jasnah lecturing Shallan on Soulcasting, about how one must try to coerce stone or be firm with air, ect.? If the caster doesn't know what the substance is then they won't know what strategy to use to induce the change. Of course once someone does it once successfully then that particular issue is mitigated. I like the alerting fabrial idea. If one can couple that detection function with an auto Soulcast function then that indeed becomes a viable option. Unfortunately the reaction times probably need a computer network for maximum effectiveness. And even a system of that nature can be overwhelmed.

If the Windrunner could catch it in air they could use lashings to redirect the thing. The Elsecaller would have to understand what it was in order to convince the Cognitive aspect of the thing to change it. The problem is speed and detection. One has to identify the ICBM, its path so as to intercept it, and do so in time to effect it with magic. Without computers that task is deadly difficult. It possibly could be done if one could mitigate these issues, but if earth decides to use saturation bombardment I don't see how we'd get enough Radiants to repel the attack.

Mongolian hordes are also going to have it tough in either Scadrian era. About the only worlds they got a decent chance is Sel away from Elantris and Nalthis. I'd say the modern American military destroys anything any Cosmere world could put up in defense, but being a member of that military I admit possible bias. So let's go with another group. Roman Legions. Supremely organized and disciplined, led by generals that know the business, experience gained in countless battles. Infantry strength, adaptive in tactics, decent quality calvary. Era 1 Scadrians get pants'd unless they have exceptional Mistborn, especially if one adds Koloss into the mix. Rhe Romans take a beating in Era 2 but can subdue what amounts to a small fighting population. Taldain gets smoked, as does Sel. Nalthis has Lifeless, a tough nut to crack but not insurmountable. Breaths are relatively easy to get and can therefore be used to support operations. The Roman army meets its match in Roshar. Between the Shards and surges it would be difficult for them to establish a beachhead or defend one once they got one. But if they start to draw spren then many bets are off.

H Tanks are great but their effectiveness would be limited on Roshar. Technically complex, any Soulcaster worth their salt could change something on that tank to make it a 40 ton paperweight. And Shardblade cuts metal as easily as it does rock. But say some enterprising egghead notices the properties of aluminum as defense. No cheap kills, right? Well.... People with surges can just shape the terrain to reduce or eliminate the mobility of said tank, of most wheeled or track vehicles actually. Artillery now. That's the real man killer for Terran forces. Imagine how damaging a bouncing Betty or a claymore filled with aluminum shrapnel would be to a Radiant of any Order. It's a world of hurt any way you stretch it. Unfortunately, due to the high oxygen levels in Rosharan atmosphere artillery is probably a weapon of last resort.

Roshar could deal with Earth better than any Shardworld we've seen so far. The surges are area denial tools. They have no supply lines to attack. They can fly. Really, disease is what ultimately beats Roshar, they aren't equipped to deal with microbes that evolved right alongside them like Terrans are; the microbes of Roshar were built to infect crustaceans. Scadrial is next in line because our tech would not be foriegn to them, merely an expansion of their own knowledge. It's like when Odium knocked on Taravanginan"s window to take a look at the Diagram. If they can figure out assembly lines then with their powers they're going to hurt us pretty bad. My strategy if I were Rosharan would be to send magical assassins to kill all the enemy leaders. But us Terrans are no slouches either and we already have the head start. Plus our communications are as close to instantaneous. Even if the Scadrians take out a bunch of us and we have dummies as commanders, sheer weight of numbers carries the war in the Terrans' favor.

The earth as stands today, were it actually a part of the Cosmere, would represent the most technologically advanced civilization in the Cosmere. And we'd likely wipe the floor with the lot of them. Scadrial and Roshar would each give us heavy losses but Scadrial doesn't have the population and Roshar doesn't have the range or immunity to disease to match us. Of course that is changing. There's a day approaching fast where we won't be able to keep up with magictech. But that day has not yet come. Scadrial has already reached the demarcation point with guns. Roshar is right there with the advance of fabrials.

Any vegetable topping is of Cultivation.

If someone could figure out what the storms a Dawnshard is and what kinda power it holds you could probably use one of those.

At this point I think it'd be safer just to kill the Radiant outright. But barring that, the safest way to imprison a Radiant I believe would be to larkin the guy then shove them into a structure residing in the Cognitive Realm. No need to worry about a summoned Shardblade or plate, they will not manifest there. No need to worry about highstorms, they will not rejuvenate people or spheres there. And without Stormlight, no surges either. The cage should also incorporate a lot of aluminum, just in case someone gets the bright idea to use their suffering as a catalyst for Oath progression. They won't be able to escape even with an Oath assisted power boost.

A dart would work better than a bullet. You aren't going to get enough velocity to penetrate anything tougher than skin anyway, might as well get the benefit of stealth and discrete poisoning.

For Tension I'd use a long rope or chain, rounded to a point at either end. It could be used in any number of ways for a versatile mind. A piercing weapon, a sword breaker, one could grab it about the middle and make one side stiff, the other a whip. Make a rope spear out of it. Really a bunch of possibilities.

And you think she wouldn't be pissed if Mraize told her straight away that Helaran was working for them? Next the entire letter serves as a test of her sleuthing skills. The Helaran bit is the hardest to verify but it's all a mishmash. The letter could also serve as a misdirection, causing Shallan to investigate in directions that serve GB interests and deflecting her from other paths. Another thing. Shallan's connection to the Ghostbloods will inevitably be found out. We as readers are probably gonna wanna see that reveal on screen. That means at least a year for the Ghostbloods to work on Shallan, a year to entangle her in their schemes, their ideology. These people have already fulfilled 2 promises to her, information on Helaran and the rescue of her other brothers. Lying about Helaran buys them time. @Kon-Tiki If Amaram was indeed targeted by the Skybreakers and Helaran was there instrument then there are a couple of things that don't add up to me. One, where was his backup? I've written in previous posts about how I believe Skybreakers operate and how Helaran doesn't fit the mission profile. Two, why was Amaram still alive? Nale doesn't seem like the type to give up on a quarry, just look at how long he pursues Lift. He's not letting a year go past with a target still on the table, especially when he has access to real Shards, living blade and plate. Furthermore he's been at war nearly continuously before his arrival at the Shattered Plains. What could be attempted once could certainly be tried again, this time with a more experienced Skybreaker. Three, why does Amaram believe he was targeted by Ghostbloods? What does he know that we do not? If by contrast it was a Ghostblood acting on his own then those questions resolve a bit easier in my mind. Ghostbloods sometimes work without immediate support; it's not as uncommon. Amaram is harder to kill with Shards. Though the Ghostbloods could get them, it's not like they're a common accessory. They may have felt sending another Shardbearer at him was throwing good money after bad. And last, Amaram knew more about his opposition than we do. He has his own sources of information after all.

I believe the solo action itself would be discouraged in one who would aspire to be a Skybreaker. He skips punishment if he were following orders or someone else's plan, but if he is out there on his own it cuts too close to vigilante justice. Skybreakers aren't trusted to crusade until the 4th Ideal after all. If @Kargeris correct and Helaran was pulling some last ditch effort to prove his worth to his employer then we can extrapolate a couple things. One, that up till now he wasn't very good, not fulfilling the promise for which he received Shards. Two, this last chance effort would almost certainly have had to been unsupervised. If the Skybreakers ran his training then where would his companion be watching from? The reports on the battlefield said there was one rogue Shardbearer, not 2. They could have been watching from the sky but that's pretty conspicuous as well. If it were the Ghostbloods nearly anyone could have been a plant, yet Amaram knew he was targeted and cared about his security. I'm sure he would have properly vetted his staff. So no supervision. If we then look at his interaction with Lin, Shallan is the only thing that keeps Helaran from burning out his father's eyes. I'm of course not a hundred percent sure of his instability, but that scene gives me the impression of a guy who isn't fully in control of himself. Kabsal was a full member. He presumably could complete a mission without props. Or he was in disfavor and so lost his artifact. Or he was on some other mission and saw a target of opportunity. Either way, he was acting independently. Helaran I believe was acting independently. The fact that Helaran was given Shards is irrelevant. For narrative purposes Shallan will have to tell Jasnah at some point. However that secret will be a difficult one for her to tell. It's a huge risk. What if Jasnah goes all over unreasonable about it? We know that's out of character for Jasnah, but does Shallan? These people did try to kill her after all. As far as false information, Helaran's affiliation is arguably the least important information in the entire letter. I'm not even sure Shallan would question it. By the time Shallan shares this information the trail will be cold. Besides, anyone who would know the truth about this is either dead or inaccessible. Last, even if Shallan finds out they were lying about Helaran what's the real harm? Enough of the information in that letter is true enough or at least plausible enough for her to be intrigued, which is really the point. Feed her information. If she buys it without question then she's only suitable for Radiant specific missions. If she parses out the lies then they can go back and say it was for training purposes, give her the real information and slot her in for a wider range of missions. Either way she's probably in too deep before she figures it out.