king of nowhere

The shard of redundancy: it allows you to do what you could have already done before. the shard of apathy: you get superimpressively amazing power, but only as long as you don't want to use them for anything. If you think of using them, you're not aphatetic anymore and you lose your powers. EDIT: similar in effect to the shard of indecision, which gives you powers only as long as you are uncertain on how to use them. Redundancy is responsible for this doubled-up magic system.

chemically, it would be more energy-effective to get it from dehydrogenation of fatty acids. Not sure what a good biochemical pathway to get methane would be, but it would probably involve fatty acids too

water also wouldn't last on venus. it's too hot, it will evaporate instantly. and then it is hot enough that the water molecules will have enough kinetic energy to escape the plant's gravity. That's why there's no water, or nitrogen, or anything lighter than carbon dioxide in venus atmosphere. All things considered, I think it will be much easier to deal with radiations than with 450 degrees of mean temperature and sulphuric acid rains. As for teraforming, difficult to say. venus could potentially be terraformed with "only" one billion of billion of tons of calcium oxide to remove all the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, then it should cool down to livable level by itself (or with the addition of something in the atmosphere to reflect off some light), then you can bring water to it and it will stay there. On mars it will be more problematic, because you'd have to create a magnetic field to the planet, and the gravity will always be too low to retain water. On the other hand, an ocean on mars would last for hundreds of millions of years, so if you get some massive comet to crash there, you'll be fine for a VERY long time. and for radiation, maybe you can just fix it with personally portable magnetic fields incorporated in clothes. Or maybe in the future cancer will be easily curable with pills and no more severe than a common cold is today, so people will just go around unprotected and then take pills. But anyway, why would you want to go on mars or venus all alone? there's no internet connection there

right, i forgot about methane and ammonia. methane is more likely, as it is already a biological byproduct, and is highly inert except when ignited. ammonia also could be, but it is toxic and more easily absorbed by the body, so less likely. Both are usable as fuels anyway, so my clean energy project stands Now I'm wondering something else. What if the skyheel fails to catch the prey? I doubt they would be stuck on the ground, or their lifespan would be very very short. So they likely have other mechanisms to refill with gas that do not depend on having had a meal in the last few hours

intersting. those gases, to be ligther than air, and still be gases under standard conditions, need be hydrogen or helium. and they are not present naturally in the atmosphere. they are so light that the earth's gravity cannot maintain them, so they would not be in roshar's atmosphere either, except for trace amounts. That means the skyheel has means to biologically synthesise hydrogen, possibly as part of the digesting system. Now I'm picturing massive domes filled with skyheels used for the production of clean fuel....

alas, the world is not fair.

Well, I see that many people took my comment way more seriously than it was intended. I certainly wasn't suggesting that we really look down on other people, I was vastly exaggerating my point for the sake of joke. But unfortunately it appears the couple of emoticons that I put there weren't enough to convey that message. However, the basis of the argument stands: we are literary entenders, other people are mass consumers and don't have refined tastes. Of course it don't mean we are better than them, although if may be suggested that we are better readers. But it is normal that people have a few things they deeply care about, over which they are entenders, and other things they care less about, over which they are mass consumers (thank you aether for the term). For example, while I pride myself of my literary tastes and attention to details, I freely admit that I'm an "ignorant barbarbarian" when it comes to music, or clothing, or many other things. So no arrogance intended. We are better entenders than them at literature (or at least fantasy literature), they are better entennders at other things. EDIT: Farthermore, I don't think people can be classified as entenders or ignorant depending on what they like. they are classified depending on what they notice. people don't have to like brandon to be entenders. they have to recognize that he puts lots of effort into consistent worldbuilding and plotting. if they can see it, and still don't care about it and prefer other stuff, it's a perfectly legitimate opinion. to use again the food metaphor, you're not a gourmet if you insist a certain spice goes on a certain preparation, just because other gourmets insist that it does. you're an entender if you can tell whether that minor, almost unnoticeable spice is there or not. If you notice it, bust still prefer it not to be there, it's just a matter of personal taste

an analogous question came to me and helped me find the answer: why many more people prefer to eat at mcdonalds than get real food? simple answer: because most people don't appreciate real food. when they chew, they don't pay much attention to it; they are probably engrossed in conversation or watching tv. they'd rather take something coontaining lots of fat and that don't require much effort. mcdonalds is the culinary equivalent of pure, indiluted fanservice. And it sells, even if everyone with good tastes would never eat there. So, we appreciate sanderson for his good writing. for his detailed worldbuilding. for the accuracy of his magic system. For the fine details of the plot. A whole forum of people analyzing his books maniacally, and no one ever found any real inconsistency or plot hole. it is a pleasure to reread a sanderson's book a second time and notice all the subtle hints that you missed the first time. like figuring out when a viewpoint character is being allomantically inflluenced. but 90% of readers do not notice this. they don't care if the world is well built; they won't notice anyway. they don't care for plot holes and inconsistencies: they don't pay enough attention to see them. they don't appreciate the subtle forshadowing when rereading: they don't reread in the first place. they pick a book, read it superficially, then pick another book. possibly not too long, they doon't want to spend effort remembering the characters. To go back with the food metaphora, we may all praise sanderson for his skill in dosing the pepper just right in the pasta alla carbonara, and we may wonder why other people don't join us in praising him. But those people won't appreciate the right amount of pepper. they won't even notice if there is pepper or not, they're not trying to notice, and they aren't intersted in noticing it anyway. In italy we have a saying: "to give pearls to pigs", meaning that the people who see something of value are not capable of appreciating it. Having understood this, we can feel superior. Now we all can go at the library with our backs straight, and if we see lower books sell more than sanderson, we can look at people buying them with disdain, and feel confident in our superiority over those ignorant barbarians. And it's ok if those books will sell more than sanderson. the barbarians eventually conquered rome, but they were no less barbarians for it. And if people look down on us and call us nerds, we will bear that name proudly. For the alternative to being a nerd is to be an ignorant barbarian, and so we'd rather be nerds. People think nerds are social outcasts and avoid them, but we're fine that way. We certainly don't want to hang up with ignornat barbarians. So, long story short: for a book to sell, it must have a passable plot, plenty of fanservice, and people must talk about it. then there's luck. a really good plot don't matter so much because most reader don't really care about it. Note: I hope I'm not sounding too much like a madman. Sometimes I start writing and then I become creative and let myself be carried away.

possible, however if that is the case there is one fundamental question: where is all that matter going eventually? is it created every time there is a storm? we know for sure it never disappears, because hardened crem is a rock like any other. so if the exxistance of a spren caused some crem to come into being, does it mean that the mass of roshar is increasing over time? if it is, is that going to bi significant in the long run? if it is not, matter is disappearing somewhere; where? we never saw anything disappear to give a physical body to a spren. overall, i don't think it's likely

Yes I do. But then, this thread is exploring potential uses of allomancers in a circus. I suppose any allomancer capable of performing the tricks described here could make much more money doing serious stuff. This whole thread is purely hypotetical.

all that stuff seems pretty dangerous, the kind that at the smallest mistake will result in the death of perfomers (bad for hiring) or spectators (bad for business). On the other hand, I was thinking a new sport could be conceived, pushball. it would work like basket, but with teams of only coinshots, played in a metal cage to allow aerial control, and with a metal bit into the ball. it could be awesome. or maybe ten people trying to push on the ball at the same time would just result in it being completely impossible to control. Maybe a better idea would be allomantic football (european football; i think you americans call it soccer). this time no metal in the ball, only a metal cage to allow the players 3d movement, but they have to use the feet to control the ball and all other soccer rules are the same. for safety, rules would forbid the players from jumping over, say, 5 meters from the ground. could be played by coinshots and lurchers alike.

about gold and age, i already asked a similar question here http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/4298-gold-compounding-and-aging/ i report the answer of some guy who either knew a lot about the cosmere, or was really good at sounding convincing

the salt argument is a good one. we already know that the highstorms are magical in nature, but I assumed it could be explained just by water getting sucked into the sky by the magic of the origin and then being nebulized so that it stays suspended long enough. but if that was the case, highstorm water would be as salty as seawater. Another option then: we can considered established at thius point that roshar has a very large underground water system, big enough to drain the purelake during storms and to drain most of the water falling during highstorms. what if it is THAT undergorund system that feeds the origin of the storms? it would explain why the water is crem rich but not salty, and would keep a good mass balance. most of the substances carried away by water would be recycled in that underground system, turned into crem. it would not work in the long run, because some of the crem would still end up into the sea, where it cannot be recycled. so if vulcanism/plate tectonics are not a factor, I have to say either some shard is regularly digging up phosphorous from the bottom of the sea, or life on roshar is running on a clock and cannot last forever. it can still last for several millions years, however, which would make the point irrelevant to the story. Of course, since the storms are magical in origin, it is fully possible that all the water and crem are "magicked in" and "magicked out", but I don't see a shard creating and destroying billions of tons of matter on a weekly basis just for the sake of it. I find more likely that it's moving stuff that is already around, hence I started calculating what kind of fluxes it would involve.

I was just doing some calculations about the highstorms and the kind of movement of water required. probably someone already did it, but what the hell, I'd rather do it again than look all the archives. first, about their frequency. in one of young kaladin's flashback, he remarks that many people like the weepings because there are less highstorms than usual, only one in the middle of the 4 weeks period. a rosharan weeek is 5 days, so the weepings grant 10 days without storms, which is longer than usual. an average of one highstorm per week seems a reasonable approximation. the storms cover all the continent, and they bring rain. not just any rain, but crem-filled rain. normal rain comes from water evaporation, but how the crem did end up in the stratosphere? It has to be seawater going up bringing the crem with it. therefore, it is likely that in the origin of the storms, whatever is there, there will also be a huge column of water rising from the sea. Every cm of rain is 10 liters per square meter, which is 10000 cubic meters of water per square km. even if roshar is smaller than earth, it cannot be THAT smaller. the continent of roshar is bound to take a few tens of millions of square km, meaning that even with the extremely conservative estimates of 10 Mkm^2 (that's not even the surface of russia alone) of land and 1 cm of rain per storm there are one hundred billions cubic meters of water rising up once per week. then times that much seems more likely. with 20 hours-day and 5 days-weeks, it means that to support one highstorm per week there must be several millions cubic meters of water rising into the air every second. While this is not as big a number as I initially assumed, and it may not be enough to generate a significant current directed towards the origin (for comparison, the gulf stream is about 30 million cubic meters per second; the antartic circumpolar current, the strongest current on earth, is 125 million cubic meters per second), it is still enough for the column on the origin to be quite big. Also, it could easily be understimated by a factor of 10, in which case it would be a very large current with a strong influence on all oceanic circulation Notice that roshar also experience normal rain from water evaporation; I don't remember ever seeing it in the book outside of the highstorms, but if there was no rain outside of the weeping, they wouldn't have a word for rain; just as they don't have a word for "noble" that do not imply clarity of eyes. I can't find data for how much it rains on our planet, the closer I can find is that all the rivers combined carry roughly one million cubic meter per second. since some of the water is going to evaporate before reaching a river, it's safe to assume that the total rain falling over landmasses is between 1.1 and 2 million cubic meters per second. Roshar has a similar average temperature to our planet, so a similar rate of water evaporation, but being smaller it will experience less overall rain (the same average amount of rain per unit of area). So, most of the water on roshar falls in the highstorms. Time for some conclusions: 1) All that water must flow back to the sea, and it must do so quite efficiently. roshar must have huge rivers. if they aren't on the surface, they must be underground (also implied by the way the shattered plains don't fill with rainwater). 2) all those continuous storms must wear down the land. crem deposition will at least partially compensate that, but it seems reasonable that there is a net loss of material. More important, if there was a net accumulation of crem, then the amount of crem suyspended in seawater would decrease over time. therefore, roshar must be geologically very active, so that the continents can uplift quickly enough to compensate erosion. on earth we have the phosphorous cycle, where the phosphorous from dead organisms get dissolved in water, carried by rivers to the sea, it depositates behind the sea as phosphatic rocks, and is then uplifted by tectonic forces and brought out of the sea where living organisms can access to it again. crem must undergo a similar cycle on roshar, but quicker becase of the greater rain. In fact, crem is almost certainly rich in phosphorous. 2b) This would imply big volcanoes and heartquakes on roshar, which we haven't seen so far. so either we never had a chance to see them, or there is another explanation for how the crem that sedimentate on the bottom of the ocean can come back in the cycle, or the actual situation on roshar isn't sustainable in the long term. 3) there must be a big column of water rising into the air at the origin of the storm 4) there must be an oceanic current bringing water to the origin. that current may vary in strenght from "just one among many others" to "strong enough that an industrialized roshar would have infinite electricity just by putting tidal generators over its course". Now that I think about it, all that water falling from the sky must have HUGE potential for hydroelectric energy. One last idea, it is possible that the origin don't drain water at a constant rate. in such case, periods of increased or decreased activity would continuously alter the oceanic currents. since currents carry lots of heat and are a huge influence on local climate (new york and naples are at the same latitude, but thanks to the gulf stream you can sometimes sunbathe in the second while it's snowing in the first), randomly shifting oceanic currents may explain why seasons are erratic. And if brandon tought about all of that during worldbuilding, I must go kneel in front of him to pay homage to his thoroughness.

I don't see why it shouldn't work. gold ferrings should have some intersting work possibilities that would not be possible in the real world. I'm thinking for example we won't have to make animal experiments for potentially angerous chemicals or drugs. we could experiment on gold ferrings, they aren't riking anything.

Well, I liked the first book, it delivered a complete story and didn't have the failings common in the rest of the series. I also liked the sixth book, the one where he's prisoner of nicci, because it shows some great character moments and is not solved by some magical chull-pull that conveniently will do everything the plot requires but will be forgotten the next time he needs it. Also, the villains are better fleshed out and don't just look like stereotyped communists (one of my many complaints with the sword of truth is that it feels too much like political propaganda). Unfortunately, book one introduced rachel, who immediately took the top place in my "literary character that make me want to hug them", pulverizing the previous title holder (which was Vin in mistborn one. in the second book she develops an emo streak that changes my feeling from "wanting to hug her" to "wanting to hit her with a baseball bat"). I also really liked the Chase-Rachel relationship; basically everything they did together in the first two books was a crowning moment of heartwarming to me. So I'm finishing the sword of truth just because I've seen they will reappear in book 9 and want to see more of them. online gaming communities aren't bad. trolls, flamers and haters are only the minority. unfortunately, since they flame so much, they tend to be the most noticeable members. but the majority is ok.

You mean the same richard rahl that forced a whole continent to submit to him through intimidation, declared himself emperor and commander in chief of the army, and then when the nations finally accepted his rule he retired into the mountains to tend his sick wife and refused to give any order? Or the one who abanddoned a people to slaughter because they voted against him at an election? ignoring the circumstance that the king, which is also their religious autority, told them to vote against him, and that 90% of that population (the haken part) is brainwashed since early age to accept anything they are told to? the sword of truth has too much protagonist-centered morality, and while richard is a good man, he did plenty of bad things with little justification, and the story just forgave him because he's the protagonist. back on rand, love would appear a clichè to us, because it's been overused. but rand don't have all our knowledge of stories. he's not genre-savy as we are. he would not recognize love as a clichè. anyway, he was in love at the time, and when you are in love all that stuff about loving makes much more sense. Also, while fighting for love is clichè, and I personally think love is overrated, but it's still a nice thing. among all the things one can have to live for, it's one of the best. certainly better than if he had said "for consumerism!" or "for online videogaming!"

i don't see silica as being rare. silicon and oxygen are among the most common elements in the universe, and silica is the single most abundant material in the earht's crust. I don't know for sure about other planets, but if not as abundant as on earth, it is at least widespread. We prefer to get it fropm sand because sand is already conveniently broken down to dust, so it saves some mining cost. but getting silicon should be cheap also on roshar,.

I just came up with some potential uses for age storing. while they are almost without practical application, now I'm curious as th their feasibility - is it possible to tap enough age that you revert to a fetus or even an embryo? if so, will you die cause you cannot survive outside of the uterus anymore, or will you rever to normal as you lose the capability to tap your metalmind - can you revert to a 4-years-old toddler? If so, will you keep your mental faculties despite your brain being much smaller, or you will get the intelligence you had at the time? If yes, I'm thinking this could be a great way to sneak through narrow passages, if only you remain smart enough to remember why you wanted to do it in the first place. and in a gunfight, you'd still be deadly with a gun, but you'd be much more difficult to hit. damnation, now I'm seeing a spaceship traveling to mars entirely manned by atium feruchemists turned to 4-years-older, because they need to eat less! Yes, I know it's quite silly, as the metal that lets you store nourishment would be much more effective for that. But I still like the image of a spaceship entirely manned by what appear to be small kids

Yes. burning the age-infused atium re4leased lots of age, more then TLR would need, so he just stored some age into a bit ot atium, swallowed it, burned it, and used the age he got from burning to fill his atium metalminds. those metalminds would then keep him going all the time, with a slow tap. every once in a while he had to repeat the process to recharge the metalminds. he didn't need to become older for that, he just needed to tap his metaminds for more age and fill the bit of atium for an equal amount. that's why he died when he lost his bracers. he didn't have any atium in his stomach to burn for youth. that should also answer your further questions. about the lack of mistborn and full feruchemists, I also assumed that harmony had tampered with powers to avoid a new lor ruler. but brandon said that it was just genetics. Also, if harmony did it, it would then be impossible to breed a mistborn. since4 a mistborn will be bred for the second trilogy, it means that harmony did not tamper with genes. or if he did, he preferred to use a way that wasn't foolproof

Can shards do that? Look at the past to see events they missed? well, if they can look into the future, i guess looking into the past is no more difficult. Otherwise, I agree that the new biology is perfectly functioning, but several animal species were just made up to fill roles in the biosphere

Something that came to me: when sazed fixed the ashworld and brought back the old world, he used all the accumulated knowledge from his metalminds. Brandon said somewhere that the technology of pre-final empire scadrial was early industrial. So, what kind of knowledge did they have, and what was he forced to improvise? Of course they knew nothing of genetics, or even the existance of bacteria, but I assume sazed used the knowledge of the shards to figure it out and fix the dna of everything. On the other hand, there's no way he could have gotten informations on the different kinds of bacteria. even if he figured out biodiversity was required for the long-term stability of life, he would have had to rework most of the bacteria from scratch. As for humans, knowing the internal structures of organs ddoes little to tell the chemical mechanisms of the body. As the lord ruler altered those mechanisms to cope with the ash, sazed had to revert them, but without a reference of what they were supposed to be. he surely did something that worked, but there's no guarantee that it's exactly the same biochemistry humans had before. probably scadrians have a few modified proteins or receptors. as for the general shape of the world, at early industrial age the shape of the continents was roughly known, but there were still many blank areas. the antartica region was still unexplored. greenland had been recently rediscovered, after all the colonies there had died centuries before. many places of siberia were still unexplored, and many small islands in the middle of the ocean were yet undiscovered. So, I guess sazed had to improvise a lot there. And then, even today there are remote places in the middle of rainforests were no white man ever set foot. We still don't know most of the creatures that live there, despite sending lots of scientific expeditions. in older times, the knowledge of those inaccessible areas were even less. So I don't think sazed had more information than "and here was jungle". He had to reinvent all the plants and animals there, using at most some physical descriptions. So, while the new scadrial looks quite like the pre-ash world, there are huge differences in the fine details. I wonder exactly how much sazed had to just invent on the spot, and if all that is going to make any difference.

do we have confirmation that brass makes you immune to your heat? i never saw sazed tap brass to get a red-hot hand and melt something with it. On the other hand, if it works like Feruchemical iron, then it should make your body more resistant to any kind of heat. including from other sources. at least, Feruchemical iron said that "it strenghtens your body so that it is not crushed by your own wheigth", and i take it to mean that your body is more resistant in general. I wonder if one could use it to become bullet proof. maybe, but it would require him to be so heavy he would sink in the ground. Anyway, even if a brass compounder can radiate heat at will, he's still vulnerable to bullets and other menial things.

those valentines are so great. I have to find a girlfriend and turn her into a sanderson fan just to get a chance to use those

well, they have a movie script, so i guess they worked on that. If i remember correctly, they changed pushing and pulling to the pieces of metal glowing (instead of seeing lines connected to the metal) and used auras in some other places. as for "video game vision", i think bars showing metals running out copuld be fine, but not all the time. say during the fight at some point time stops, and we zoom on vin until we see the world through her eys, and here we see metal bars and we see she's running out. Not sure, I'm not a movie director