Hoiditthroughthegrapevine

The metal conducting core I would imagine would have a much smaller diameter than in my diagram, like a 12 Guage wire, and with soulcasting being employed, you could have a small replaceable conducting tip that could screw into the spear head until it makes contact with the meral core, easily replaceable. Isn't it implied in the text that the gemstone fabrial in the spear has two functions, 1) draining the stormlight from the Radiant and 2) dissipating that stormlight? Why would they need extra gems?

And And based on the description from the text, I think this is how the Fused Fabrial Spears are constructed. Like @Lightspine's thermodynamic analysis of the movement of stormlight suggests, I think that a Radiant pierced by a conductor connected to a fabrial that is designed to dissipate stormlight is the best explanation.. With thin lathes of aluminum applied around the perimeter and running the full length of the spear shaft, a Radiant would be hard pressed to cut through the shaft or sever the internal core. Likewise, the spear tip is probably coated with a thin layer of aluminum except near the tip where the sharpened metal point of the conducting metal core would be exposed. As to why it's not mentioned that the metal is aluminum, it could simply be that they haven't retrieved one yet for analysis. It might be a priority in Odium's army to retrieve fallen spears, just like it would be a priority to retrieve a dead shardblade or plate to keep it from falling into the enemies hands. I think it's too early to know what type of metal would make up the core of the spear, but with Navani's chapter opening TED talks on fabrial science we might get a better idea soon. One possible improvement to the Fused spear would be to combine the investiture draining fabrial with a painrial, so instead of just dissipating the stormlight it could be used to further incapacitate the Radiant. Yowch.

You're right, they do say they turn them off, but the effect would be the same. Building an Aluminum shed for the turn around would make it so they wouldn't need to switch off the x-axis conjoiners during the turn. Your'e right, looking at my diagram why would an air bubble sit in the middle of a vertical column of water? Only the x and the z axes are set by leveling, and like Jowfu said, the alignment of the x and z axes between the relative framework of both sets of spanreeds would involve a rotation about the y axis of one relative coordinate system. My supposition is that this coordinate translation is necessarily accomplished by the magic of the fabrials. The conventions of how the boards are setup aren’t mentioned much in text, but it is stated that the spanreeds are placed in a holder. With the spanreed oriented so it is perpendicular to the leveled x and z planes it is necessarily oriented along the y axis. I think we have to assume that the conjoining rubies are placed in a standardized position, and the distance from the ruby to the tip has also been standardized, and since this is a common relative displacement for the sake of simplicity we could say that the tip of the spanreed where it touches the x-z plane can said to be the origin for its relative 3 dimensional coordinate system. But the utility of a conjoiner that transfers one dimensional force vectors along a specific plane is obvious I think, because the only thing that is linked between the two systems would be motion along one relative axis. The only thing each conjoiner cares about is the force being applied along its relative axis. The chull carried lattice has a realtive orientation where the conjoiners have a specific orientation for forward motion along the x axis. The coinjoiners embedded in the hull of the Fourth Bridge likewise have a relative orientation for what forward motion is. There is no need to align these vectors, forward motion in one system is transferred to the other system as forward motion, regardless of the orientation of either one. I can envision a series of weights and conjoined fabrials that are activated by control systems that are likewise conjoined to the on deck control systems of the Fourth Bridge giving precise control over ascent/descent, and forward and retrograde motion. Pitch and yaw really aren't necessary to fly floating magical barges. I think this is fun to speculate about, but these are the early days of Rosharan fabrial science for sure. My bet is that the future lies in heatrial powered steam engines, and if the ethics line up, using the surge of gravitation. All this at a distance stuff can and probably will go horribly wrong.

Here's an idea for troop immobilization, say you have a dangerous prisoner, like for instance, the man previously known as Moash, and you want him to be unable to move from a specific spot. Use this little beauty, a locking shackle conjoined to a 2 ton block of soulcast granite. Or why not just conjoin the shackle with the base of Urithiru.

I have to say first off, that I called this method of airship construction back in early 2018, but based on the critiques by @The One Who Connects of the the physics of this arrangement I also gave this method up for lost. But with a greater understanding of how conjoiner fabrials work thanks to the as usual excellent analysis of @Pagerunner and @Jofwu, I believe that I might have figured out what is going on and further how to extend and enhance Airships using conjoiner fabrials. One of the breakthrough realizations was that when objects are conjoined, they function as one single rigid body. I think the mechanism that fits the evidence and most elegantly explains how spanreeds are able to synchronize without relation to cardinal directions is that a shared cognitive reference frame is created. The spanreed station at both points A and B have been set up and verified to be vertically, and horizontally level (for both x and z), and further the spanreed is placed in a specific location on each separate board. This creates a fixed frame of reference for each board that is the same, with only a translation of absolute coordinates to relative coordinates necessary (through the application of magic) in order to perfectly synchronize the movements of the spanreeds.This setup is shown in the following diagram. The initial position of the vertically aligned spanreed would function as the common origin for both spanreeds, and the movement of 1 spanreed would be translated to the relative reference frame of the other. The reason that spanreed communication doesn't work when one of the spanreeds is in motion is because their shared fixed reference frame no longer exists, or more precisely because the moving spanreed is traveling away from it's origin point. The only reason I mention all of this is that I think this gets at the heart of what is happening when Navani and her artifabrians are using "aluminum to isolate motion along a plane". From the description of the how the Fourth Bridge is made to fly by "Alternating between those two lattices—one to control altitude and a second to control horizontal movement...", I think Brandon's idea is to isolate the shared motion of conjoined fabrials along one axis, basically creating a 1 dimensional vector. I think that with the proper application of Aluminum this would be possible by shielding the 2 dimensions that you want to ignore. Here's a diagram about what I am talking about, the first picture is a fully unshielded conjoiner, showing the 3 axes that it can translate force and thus influence motion along. The second has all axes but the X shielded by aluminum, the third has all but Y shielded, and the third has all but the Z shielded. So applying these fixed one-dimensional conjoiners to the Vertical and Horizontal lattices that move the Fourth Bridge, you basically have a system where Vertical and Horizontal movement can be controlled separately and independently. Here's a diagram of how this is applied: The purple dots are Amethyst reverser fabrials that are aluminum shielded to only transfer motion along the Y axis, the red dots are ruby conjoiners that have been shielded to only transfer motion along the X axis. When the Vertical lattice is lowered from the top of Urithiru, the airship rises an equal distance. When the horizontal lattice is pulled by the Chulls, the Fourth Bridge advances an equal distance. With the conjoiner fabrials that are only transferring force along the X axis, it is possible to see how the aluminum screened turn around would work, the diagram below shows the turn, and also shows vectors of motion for X during the stages of the turn for an aluminum shielded turn and for a non-shielded turn. For the shielded turn, during the portion of the chull cart journey when the x movement is not being transferred to the Fourth Bridge, it would be possible for the momentum it experienced prior to the conjoiner being cutoff to continue to impel it in it's current direction because the motion of the shielded fabrials would not affect the Fourth Bridge's fabrials. If the turn occurred without aluminum shielding, the force in the direction of X is just the x component vector during the turn, and after the turn the force would be applied along the x axis but in the opposite direction. The reason that using conjoined fabrials and reversers is such an appealing prospect is the extremely large amount of potential energy that objects at the top of Urithiru have. It should be possible using a system of conjoined weights to move the vertical lattice efficiently and quickly to control with precision the ascent and descent of the Fourth Bridge, the following diagram shows the minimum number of conjoined weights to operate efficiently, but extra massive weights and corresponding paired fabrials could be added to increase the on demand maneuverability of the Fourth Bridge. The use of small lightweight conjoiners that apply force to lattices could be extended to the horizontal motion of the Fourth Bridge as well by using something as simple as a chute that drops down at a 45 degree angle, basically allowing for half of the force exerted in the drop to be applied to X direction (and after the lattice and lightweight conjoiner are dropped, the lightweight conjoiner attached to the lattice could be disconnected from the conjoined weight and drawn back up to the top of the chute, ready to perform an emergency speed maneuver again). And you could have batteries of these ready to go, giving the slow and very poorly maneuvering Fourth Bridge a bit of help in emergency evasive maneuvers.

And @lol_king's quote from the chapter I think the simplest explanation for the difference in application of the surge of gravitation between a human radiant and a Fused Great One is the medium they are lashing. When a human body or an object is lashed it visibly leaks stormlight because they are imperfect receptacles, but when a flying Fuzed lashes themselves with the surge of gravitation they have a faint dark violet nimbus around them, but never are described as leaking. The simplest explanation is that the Fuzed are using their evolutionary advantage to lash something that they all have that has the advantage of near complete containment of voidlight, namely their gemhearts. Thus if a gemheart were lashed and a different Lashing was needed, the first lashing could be withdrawn with almost no loss of voidlight. The limit to the number of successive lashings could have to do with limiting mechanical strain on their gemhearts, and secondarily conserving voidlight by not having to expend voidlight to heal damage to their gemhearts from multiple lashings. Lashing an external object (like the spear Kaladin lashed) would be a rare occurrence because they would lose some of their voidlight, which they probably like to keep in reserve for healing. I think a more speculative proof of this is the way in which the ostensibly teleporting Fuzed moves around. I think the red light that is seen might in fact be the Fuzed's gemheart, both the container for the voidlight necessary for spiritual regrowth to grow a new body and the object that the surge of teleportation is being applied to.

Navani does seem the most likely candidate, and I just thought about this looking at the painting, if it is Navani then Roshar has the ultimate power couple. The blade could definitely be an honorblade, maybe even Ishar's. It would be interesting if that could give her the ability to power Urithiru without actually bonding the Sibling. Fabrial speculation, what if the boots are gravitation surge boots, that would be sweet. And the tiara she's wearing might be a special application of the surge of illumination, allowing her to spy on conversations from a distance like Moraine's diadem trick. The back of the hair ones might be illumination surge fabrials to make her hair look shinier? And the loopy belt thing, maybe it's a detachable bolo with painrials to stun enemies.

Yeah, the opening is very strangely paced, the story is a little difficult to get into but the love story is great and the ending is fantastic!

That's a great song! Here's one of my favorite songs of all time: Smart Partol / Mr DNA (Devo)

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley is great, and it has a very sweet love story (though it starts out very strangely). "Harry" Crewe, the female protagonist, is a truly unique character, and the romance is intertwined perfectly with the plot. McKinley's other Damar book, the Hero and the Crown, is also very good but the love story is only a very minor part of the story. My wife really likes McKinley's novels that are retelling of classic fairytales, like Beauty (Beauty and the Best), Spindles End (Sleeping Beauty), and Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin Hood).

And if you take a blobfish and put it into a comic strip you get...

Mister Me (They Might Be Giants)

Granted. You now know where Jimmy Hoffa's body is, unfortunately the reason you know is that are at the bottom of the Hudson River with cement shoes too. Your bane is that you have gills and have to remain underwater, filter feeding off the bottom layer of muck of the riverbed. But you know a very interesting secret. I wish that I would leave actual carbon footprints wherever I walk, like the soles of my shoes or feet had been rubbed with burnt charcoal. Yeah, that would be neat, then I could dance on the sidewalk and leave those footstep patterns for repeating the dance.

Granted. They start singing instead. They have lovely singing voices, but they only classic rock songs that have the word "need" in them, and dramatically pronounce it so it sounds like "knee-ed". So they could be singing "Love is All You Knee-ed" by the Beatles or "I Knee-ed You Tonight" by INXS or possibly their favorite "I Knee-ed Somebody" by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I wish to be able to see 10 seconds into the future, but only when I activate this ability.

Yeah, it was a fun camping trip. Windy at the ocean, but perfect back at the campsite with a beautiful creek burbling past it. Without further ado (just one of those really), here is the Scrublord with his Awakened Plunger traveling companion. Note that his transdimensional space ship is designed like a porta potty, and his cape is totally two ply. Plungey comes in very handy for subduing aliens of unknown disposition, like this tummy eyed bear creature from Carebearia 12.

Great roasts @SirWolfe and @Toaster Retribution! I was seeing if you wanted to sign up for the Cosmere Character Roast Tournament. The current tournament is already underway, but you can sign up for the next one if you want, they're a ton of fun!

Ahhh, I gotcha, I'm going camping this weekend,I'll do a scrublord version when I get back.

Sure thing.

I don't necessarily disagree with what you are saying about the armor being one entity but a singular entity can still be composed of other discrete and singular entities as well. I think this analogy might clear up what I'm trying to say. A pearl necklace can be thought of as a single thing, but each of the individual pearls that make it up can also be thought of as singular things. The chain that the pearls are strung on is a singular thing, as is the clasp that closes the chain. So you have a top level thing, the necklace, that includes all the things that compose it (pearls, chain, clasp), but each individual thing is still a separate thing. I've always thought that Shadesmar and the beads that represent discrete objects of human thought were just visual metaphors for Liebniz's system of Monadology. That's a really good point that the pieces of the armor are destroyed as distinct units. Also the fact that when a subunit of armor has sustained a critical amount of damage it bursts apart in a shower of molten metal is a pretty good confirmation that it is a separate entity that can longer be sustained. I don't think we have enough information now to say for certain that each piece of armor is a separate spren, and that intuitively seems slightly off to me just because of the difference in mass between say a grieve and the breast plate. The breast plate is composed of significantly more matter than the grieve, but with Syl’s offhand info drop in the Interlude I think we'll find out exactly what shardplate is in RoW.

Congratulations @Sorana and @Gears, those were great roasts! Excited to see the roasts for round 2!

Syl specifically refers to shardplate as "corpses", this would be strange if the cousin spren formed a new unitary cognitive entity. There's also the WOBs about shardplate regrowth tug-of-war, especially the one that states that if someone other than the shardplate owner were able to regrow a glove from a fragment of that glove, then the corresponding glove of the owner's shardplate would disintegrate. That points to there being a functional tipping point where the 2 cannot coexist as separate entities. This implies that cognitively the glove is itself a unitary entity. This is similar to the WoB I got at the Oathbringer signing about stabbing a Shadesmar bead with Nightblood that represented an entire castle. If the bead for the castle was destroyed, all of the dependent objects that makeup that idea of the castle would likewise be destroyed, even though they are separate cognitive entities. So shardplate, even though it can be viewed as a single whole, still has cognitively distinct components. It's less like Mobile Suit Gundam, and more like Voltron. All dead shardplate that we've seen is manifest in the Physical Realm. When a deadeye shardblade is summoned, the deadeye spren is pulled from the CR and manifests as a sharblade in the PR. Deadeye sharblade spren only exist in the CR when they are not manifest as shardblades in the PR. One possible explanation for why no deadeye cousin spen are seen, and perhaps the likeliest, is that if they weren't summoned to form shardplate at the time their KR broke their oath they just returned to being less sentient spren. Their benefit from the bond is most likely far less than what a Radiant level spren experiences, so it follows that the damage done to them would likewise be less. If however they maintain something of the cohesion of shardplate in the CR when they are unbound, and this larger cognitive entity that they form parts of experiences something of the same sapient growth that Radiant spren experience, then they might just be wandering around like lumbering Frankensteins and lost somewhere in the depths of the sea of beads in Shadesmar. I think the former is far more likely though, and possibly the cousin shardplate spren that have survived are just mildly damaged lesser spren. Like a wind spren that's just a little bit denser than other windspren.

I totally agree. The thing that most people gloss over when they talk about the golden age of the Roman Republic is the fact that it was only golden for those citizens of Rome who were equestrian class or higher. While a certain social mobility was allowed for through military service and dispensation the economy still ran on the back of slave labor and the perpetual taxation of subject nations. The reforms attempted by the Gracchi are symptomatic of this inherent flaw, and this plebian / patrician divide was really the lever that the politically ambitious Romans used to achieve power. One of the singular mistakes that stands out to me of the Senate in the end days of the Republic was allowing Marius to pass legislation assigning control of legions to their commanding general instead of to the state. And, as you pointed out, the Roman system was basically designed to promote military men of ambition, with the constant campaigns to quell barbarous insurrection and the access that gave the successful governors to the spoils of war. Both Crassus and Pompey made their names and their fortunes campaigning, and commanded the loyalty of the legions under their command. It's almost impossible to think of Caesar without thinking of the almost cult like loyalty of his 10th legion (the details of what they did to preserve Caesar's honor are well laid out in Plutarch's life of Caesar).

Caesar was an exceptional general, and a very smart and capable person. But it is undeniable that he fundamentally broke the Roman Republic and set Rome on the path of inevitable decline and dissolution. He was a demagogue that undermined the power of the foremost body of the old republic, namely the senate, by lavishing money on the plebians in order to secure lucrative posts for himself and his supporters. He really was ambition incarnate, and he used his eloquence and the false projection of reasoned compromise (that he knew wouldn't be accepted by the senate) to appeal directly to the commons to make an end run around the senate to establish laws by decree before he even left Rome for Gaul. He was ruthless to his enemies, but always willing to extend clemency to those he had beaten who could be useful to fulfill his ambitions. He also inspired extreme loyalty in his troops by his tireless exertions, the example of his bravery, and by his knack for winning battles against impossible odds. It can be argued that this was just an extension of his uncle Marius' populist policies as the leader of the Populares faction, and further that he employed some of the same tactics to seize power that Sulla (the leader of the Optimates, the conservative pro Senate faction) employed to seize power from the Marius faction. Caesar also capitalized on the popular anger against Sulla's policy of prescription (offering a 2 talent bounty on purported enemies of the Optimates). This policy really was just a pretext to seize and auction assets, and it made Sulla very unpopular. And part of his early strategy of rising to power involved the bold resuscitation of his Uncle Marius' legacy, to endear himself to the commons. Like Sulla, after he marched on Rome he had himself declared dictator. During his time as dictator, he expanded the number of sitting senators, filling the senate with his own supporters, and turning the senate into nothing more than a rubber stamp body. Further he forced the Senate to confer upon him titles like "Father of the Fatherland" and "Imperator" which essentially just rubbed their noses in the fact that they no longer had any real power. Senators like Cato and Cicero had long seen this coming (Cicero was blamed to a small degree for helping clear Caesar of the Catiline conspiracy) and the members of the Optimate faction decided that assassination was the only way to return to the Republic. Unfortunately for the conspirators Caesar was loved by the commons (due to his constant attempts to curry their favor), so instead of being hailed as heros that saved the roman Republic the conspirators had to hide from the angry mob of rioters (who were incited by Marc Antony). Also, unfortunate for the conspirators, was the fact that Caesar had adopted Augustus for his heir, who the Optimates thought to control as a counter force to Mark Anthony's growing ambitions. They clasped tight the snake to their chest, because Augustus had learned well the trick of putative magnanimity, conferring meaningless honors on the senate while forcing them to make him emperor for life. Possibly the most damaging aspect of Caesar's legacy was that his policies removed the systems of checks on executive (consular or dictatorial) power. The list of Augustus successors reads a bit like a list of supervillains. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. With the exception of Claudius, whom many historians regard as somewhat simple, all the rest of emperors in the Julio-Claudian dynasty abused their powers horribly. Absolute power corrupts, etc. Though Rome did produce Marcus Aurelius, the forces that led to it's decline were well in motion when Caesar was assasinated.

Those are good points, but he is nearly unkillable. If he's a serious enough target Odium (as he as already shown himself capable of doing by the stealing of Jezrien's blade) could still get to him in Urithiru. With his power set, he is basically the queen on the chessboard, to not utilize him is an oppurtunity cost that Roshar can probably ill afford. He's the best general on Roshar, battle proven in the wars of unification and the wars of the shattered plains, and a mobile battery of stormlight. Making sure he is well protected is paramount, but to not use him would be like having a dawnshard and using it as a paperweight. I think there are a couple of ways that his abilities could best be utilized, some are based more on speculative probabilities than others. 1) Based on his powers displayed in Oathbringer, its a given that he can supercharge Radiants with stormlight. This is functionally different than drawing stormlight from infused gems, he was able to give Kaladin enough investiture to fly half a continent away to find Drehy and Skar. So one definite use would be to use him as the the central hub to a large radiant strike force, operational command of elite forces and provision of stormlight. 2) Like Caesar, he commands the loyalty of the soldiers who are fighting for him. This is more speculative to be sure, but if Jasnah has mastered her Elsecaller surges and is able to use transportation to move around Roshar quickly with others in tow, he could basically be the ultimate field commander, present at every battle that he is needed, including the political ones (which are just as dangerous) back at the tower. It seems likely to me that transportation should be usable for more than just the transitioning between realms, and this would be a very cool application of that surge. 3) This has been removed, because it references the Syl interlude that just came out, RoW spoilers are only allowed in the RoW spoiler forum, spoiler tags aren't enough. 4) All major treaties, compacts and alliances should be arbited by Dalinar. This is speculative, but a bondsmith bonded to the cognitive shadow of the shard of binding contracts should by his sanctification of the contract entered into impart at the very least some sort of negative consequence to any party that breaks their sworn commitment. He would be the ultimate notary public. *Edited to remove RoW spoiler, as per Chaos these have to be confined to the RoW spoiler Board, spoiler tags aren't enough*

Sure thing, here is a plate of Nachos, wearing a guacamole beret.