king of nowhere

Seems stretched to be a coincidence. However, if it is not, how did the lord ruler know about austre? The only possible answer is that he got the knowledge from preservation, but then sazed got all the knowledge of preservation, and he mentions that ruin and preservation was once part of a whole, but could not find much about it. just the name adonalsium. so i doubt preservation knew of austre, and so it is likely a coincidence. after all, there aren't that many combinations of letter that you can use wiuthout two of them resembling each other. Otherwise, there's some intersting chapter of the cosmnere to write.

it was specified that "some" of aluminium's alloys are also allomantically inert, and the guns were made with some of those alloys. it was also said that they would wear out faster, but i suppose if you can afford an aluminium gun hen having it melted and recasted every once in a while would be a trivial matter. And it is one important reason I like sanderson's work so much that he takes the time to address those kind of issues. My suspension of disbelief is pretty low on scientifical inconsistencies. As far as aluminium jackets go, they would probably need to be too tick. We don't know if a lead bullet encased in aluminium foild becomes allomantically inert, or if there is a partial shielding depending on how tick is the aluminium foil, or if aluminium foil will only block emotional allomancy. maybe any item big enough to make an aluminium foil worthwhile would also be too big to be pushed effectively. Also, ceramic weapons may be more effective. I think it was experimented in the real world because they could pass metal detectors, and they worked ok, but I'm not sure. However, you don't want to drop one of those.

now that's a good point to argue: time bubbles stand still can cannot be moved. but still compared to what? we know that the definition of "still" depends on the reference system. wayne's bubbles appeared to be still compared to the center of heart, but what if they are linked to the closer object of mass greater than x? what would be the reference system in deep space? maybe once you are far enough from a planet they will move with the spaceship. but won't two opposite bubbles inside each other just cancel each other regardless of reciprocal size? I think it was stated in the book.

I think the reason many more even numbers than odd numbers are found in the constants of the cosmere is that many of those are the result of combinatorial calculation. Basically, they come from the multiplication of smaller numbers. When you multiply numbers, you are much more likely to end up with an even number than odd. even times even is still even, and even times odd is even again. only odd times odd is odd. so all you need is to get one single even number down the line and you will get an even number as a result no matter how many odd numberws you put there. I agree that the basic constants of the cosmere are just 3, 10, 16.

I don't really have an issue; I'm just overanalyzing

well, I always assumed tha the thing about elizabeth rulign the world is just the way the story got modified with time. she ruled approximately one third of the world population, but if successive ages have passed her name different, they may as well changed a bit her accomplishments. Anyway, I like the idea that it is a parallel universe where things went mostly like in our world, but with some differences. It certainly makes more sense than everything else. Even if the evidence for big bang being planted an be a fascinating idea, at least for those who liked terry pratchett's "strata".

it seems a sound theory. I especially like the idea that any misting can burn also the god metal alloys of his meal because it has been established that there is a great number of allomantic alloys that can be made from god metals, much more than the regular metals, and allomancy is much more tidy if it don't require a ludicrous amount of different kinds of mistings that can burn extremely specialized god metal alloys. Only problem I see with it is the lerasium required for world hopping. as far as we know there were only ten spheres in the first place. nine the lord ruler gave to his first allies, and the tenth was taken by elend. so where would have damoux gotten the lerasium to worldhop? That is not an unsormountable problem, since he must have been contacted by the shard - I just don't see him finding a bead of lerasium and one of atium by himself, much less melting them together and burning them to see what happens, nor do i see him understanding what happened if he accessed the cognitive realm. So the only reasonable scenario is that the 17th shard contacted him in some way and thaught him to worldhop. I have no idea where they would have found lerasium, but they are a powerful enough organization that they could certainly do it without breaking suspension of disbelief if the author wills it.

we kknow time is cyclic, that every age is repeated forever and ever. that is repeated all the time throughout the series. we also know that our world is part of the remote past of the wot world, before the age of legends. stories of merk and mosk fighting with spears of fire, of lenn flying to the moon in the belly of an eagle of fire, queen elsbet who ruled all the world, and there is even a mercedes logo displayed in the panarch's place in tarabon. That means, since time is cyclic, that this world must also be our past. What that implies for the pattern of the ages? We know pretty well our past. We have soldi evidence for the formation of the earth from molten rock, and are sure of the big bang, even if we may be wrong on some details. This mean that randland must be in our past before that. I can only think of two explanations for it: one is that at some point the whole universe is destroied, then started anew. that would mean the age sequence takes VERY long to repeat itself. I don't think that is very likely, as it would be very anticlimatic. the "and even myth is long forgotten before the age that gave it birth come again" part would be a bit lame if it meant that at some point the whole universe was wiped out and everything was restarted from hydrogen dust. of course there can be no memories left. And there's much less point in rand saving the world if the world would be destroied anyway at some point in the future. We could just let it be destroied now and save some time. Another possibility is that someone fabricated all the evidence. Someone in the far future will reproduce all the experimental evidence pointing to our universe having 15 billion years, starting from putting all the fake old bones in the right geological strata to recreating the background cosmic noise. and scattering the galaxies in a way consistent with our knowledge of their formation. In this case I would really like to know how and why. yes, i realize "how" wouldd probably be answered "with the power" and "why" would be "because a foretelling told them to do it", but still. Any idea in how all this could connect?

but as the book progresses and other characters grow, moiraine becomes worse and worse, reducing herself to the level of others. really, refusing to exchange with rand the answer they got from the snake people? She denies herself AND rand precious information. her pow in chapter 21 is so much different from those in previous books. in previous books she was ready to do what she must, while here she is often petty in her scheming for power. she shifted from doing her duty to bullying other poeple into doing what she wanted. I guess that change would be a result of her struggle with rand.

In the map of the westland there is one big lake in the middle of the mountains of mist. It is something very strange, and not only geographically. Now, that would be a near-impossible place for a big lake. It has two effluentss, and that would require the two of them to be at exactly the same altitude. I don't think there's ever a mountain lake with 2 emissaries in our world, but that could be explained by the breaking. Still, after 3000 years the river bed of one of the two should have been eroded more, and that should have become the only effluent unless a number unless a number of very specific clauses are met. Then there's the fact that a mountain lake, that can count only on a limited drainage basin, receives enough water to compensate for all the evaporation (which is a very high amount for a lake that big) AND feed two big rivers. That would require a lot of rain on the place. But more so than the ggeographic unlikelyness of such a lake, what caught my eye was that it is the only sizeable lake in the westlands. The only other lake mentioned in the books is the one around far madding (and there's the new one near rhuidean, but we have no informations on it), but it is not big enough to show on the map. There aren't even any big lakes in all of shara. So here we are, with a lake that is the biggest lake in the biggest continent on the world, that is at least ten times bigger that the second biggest lake, that relies for its existance on being made with the power and on a big number of coincidences after that. Sometimes I think I'm reading too much about it. Maybe RJ just put a lake there without looking at it from the scientific side. maybe he did put a single lake because he had no need for lakes in his story but felt the map needed at least one. But sometimes I think that a lake there is too big a coincidence if it wasn't conceived with a distinct role in the plot. I have the feeling that it must mean something. It must have a function. there must be something important there. I would bet on it being the location of the horn of valere, if I didn't knew it to be safe in the white tower. What do you think?

I just reread the first three books and I can't believe how idiotic most of the main characters are. I remembered moiraine acting ambiguous from the beginning, thus earning distrust from everyone, but after rereading I saw she was open and honest as much as she could be at first, yet no one trusted her anyway. Not even after she put herself between two forsaken and the emond fielders. Especially amzing how rand - who distrust everything moiraine says despite the three oaths and despite knowing they are on the same side and despite her taking great risks to save him countless times - immediately believe ishamael's claims that the white tower wants to set him as a false dragon. Immediate distrust for a close ally and immediate acceptace for his worst enemy? what is wrong with him? Egwene and nynaeve are just as bad, despising everything moiraine did even when doing the same and even when acknowledging she did the right things. when they went adventuring nynaeve and egwene kept squabbling for leadership despite having no need to do so. They act like spolied kids most of the time. Not to menion how they treat gawin and galad when they are trying to know why they disappeared. they could have just said "sorry, we were ordered to keep it secret" but they again had to treat them like ccrap. As if they had not the right to ask why their sister disappeared. No wonder galad went to the whitecloaks. It's already something he did nto became convinced his sister was a darkfriend. Especially ridiculous then is their conception of morality. When they are prisoners in the stone of tear, hielded in their cell, egwene manages to capture the black sedai holdinng their shield in TER. But then she has no idea how to make her drop the shield. How about killing her? No, that would be bad! Yes, they are not willing to kill a black ajah that is taking them captive, even when that could be the only way of escaping before the ritual with the 13 myrdrals takes place. So what? they went to hunt the balck ajah to give them a stern warning? they may even call them "bad girls" if they really are angry. I can't believe the fate of the world is in the hands of people like them. And then mat saves them and they treat him like crap. And in future books, after they fight in tanchico, they treat the panarch of tarabon worse than they treat a captured moghedien! Mat is also extremely close-minded. He always assumes that he knows better than anyone else. Everytime one of the girls do something strange, he never think that maybe they know what they are doing. Oh, and he don't understands why people try to kill him. After all, he only sound the horn... If they were having a dinner together, and someone would ask "rand, please give me the salt" he would say "Never! I will never be manipulated in doing what you want!" while egwene and nynaeve would try to bully each other into doing it and moiraine would suggest that maybe you not having salt is part of the pattern. And all the while they are keeping secrets from each others, sometimes just for spite or "to show that they would not be bullied", but they don't understand how the others could keeep secrets from them! Really, if those guys have learned to talk with each other and to trust that maybe someone else knows better than they do, the wot would have been a trilogy. Even if the prize for the most stupidity goes to gawin for the scene in a future book when he "learn" of the death of his mother: that scene is really ridiculous "there is some unconfirmed voice that morgase disappeared. Someone with no first hand knowledge - or even second or third hand knowledge, for that matter - says that the dragon killed her" "the light burn him! I'll kill him with my hands!" And a few books after, when egwene tries to persuade him rand did nothing "can you prove it for sure without any hint of doubt?" Yes, he will believe a wild tale grown over an unconfirmed voice, but he will require plenty of proof to believe otherwise. "lordd gaebril was really a forsaken, he used compulsion on morgase and he may be the one responsible for her disappear" "I still think it was rand". I pity moiraine. She could have had a cozy life in the tower but she choose to have twenty years of hardship only to get to risk her life on a daily basis for some ungrateful people who will hate her for saving their life, will hide from her vital informations and would try to overrule her every command for no other reason that they don't like her. If i were her, I would have balefired them all, then shouted at the sky "next time, bring some ta'veren that are more responsible!". I'm so glad they get to grow up in further books. Sometimes I want to scream at them over the pages.

I don't think if he had worlhopping or other magical capabilities sigzil would have stayed stuck in bridge 4. remember, before kaladin arrived, the life expectancy on a bridge crew was a few weeks at most. Sigzil expected to die. II'm not sure if hoid knew he would survive because we don't know much about what hoid can do. But even if he knew kaladin's potential, it was far from certain he would have made it, much less saved one random member of the crew. I'd think it more likely that hoid gave sigzil for dead too, and he wasn't important enough for rescuing.

I think they were discovered before the beating. marsh also hadn't snapped yet at the time - he snapped when they killed his mother - and I find unlikely that both of them went through the beating without snapping. After that they were on the road, and kelsier was good enough that he never came in a snapping situation. until the pits.

Did brandon said that he would make that sequel? Because I missed the announcement. I always check the news on the website, but as far as I know he's planning the modern era mistborn trilogy and AoL was a spinoff, one that may have sequels but for which there were no real plans yet. If he already has a title, he must have also an accurate enough plot already. Can someone link some post of sanderson where he refers directly to that "shadows of self"? Thanks

A question that just came to me. the title of all other books of sanderson are pretty straightforward and are derived from something important in the plot - even if in warbreaker's case it is not known until the last page what a "warbreaker" is. Now that I think about it, also towers of midnight is not referred to anything in the book - said towers should be in seanchan as far as i remember, and are never involved directly in the plot - but that is from the wheel of time so I'm not counting it. the thing is that in every book sanderson wrote on his own plot he gave a tutile that referred directly from something important in the book. But not alloy of law. there is no mention of an alloy of law into the book. the closer thing is wax mentioning how people are similar to alloys, how a tiny bit of something else may make for a totally different person, and that referring to miles and the way he changed from the lawkeeper he was. but I don't think the title refers to that. Or maybe the "alloy" are wax and wayne, but it seems far-fethced as an interpretation. So, why such a choice of a title?

I used to think so, but it appears compounding don't really burn much of the material. Marsh only had one bag of atium to start with, and he's been around for 300 years and according to brandon he can keep going "for a long time", meaning an easily carriable bag of atium ccan compound for several centuries. And miles kept draining his metalminds all the time, and he had to buy the new gold. He was able to do so with a lawman pay, so either lawmen in the roughs are paid ludicrous sums, or he didn't need more than a few grams of gold per month at most. the drawback with this mechanism is that once the patient is healed, he need time to refill the metalmind. so you can only heal a patient every few weeks with such a system. Hardly practical in a big hospital with dozens of people in risk of life every day. Not to mention the risk that the patient may steal the spike. Given the rarity of finding a bloodmaker willing to be spiked, and the fact that the spikes run out of power with time, I figure such spikes would be extremely rare. Somewhere in the order of one per million people. While with the compunding you can heal a patient in a few minutes, so it can make a difference. It would burn away some gold, but I think it would still cost much less than all the medications and nurses and other stuff needed to heal people the old way. I do. He'd get paid plenty of money to do nothing but stay in bed all day. Even sick, he'd still be able to read or play videogames (no need to fill as hard as you can, you can fill a goldmind at a steady rate and still be fine enough to read), and if he wanted to do some more draining activity he could just stop filling for a while. It's a dream job! Unless one takes it as a stakanovist. In which case, he would fill as much as he can as long as he can, making his every waking hour miserable. While if he takes his time filling the metalminds, he will know some people will probably die becuase he could not provide enough healing power... ok, so not 100% a dream job, but still good enough for me. The drawback with this system is, once again, a matter of scale. wayne needed several days, even weeks worth of charging the metalminds to recover from something deadly. there aren't many bllodmakers, so even hiring most of them, you would probably not get enough healing for all who need. Hiring just one single gold compounder should solve any problem, though.

It makes me think you could use spikes in an hospital. You take them from volunteer donors in point of death, two spikes allowing double gold with some starting reserve. When an ill person is brought, you spike him in some nonlethal place to give him double gold. with that, the person can heal in seconds or minutes at most. he can then put some charge back into the spike (a spike can be used as a metalmind too) and have the spikes removed. that will result in a deadly condition changed to two non threatening wounds. if you can do it with something so small as an earring or a needle, bonus point, but even a stab in an arm would be ok compared to certain death without that treatment. the spikes would remain in place too little time to have any effect on the personality. Only problem is that the spikes will leak power with time, so after you heal some people with them you have to get new ones. You are dependent on augurs and bloodmakers donors to keep a storage of spikes. But if you can heal some hundred people with the same couple of spikes, it would be feasible. if that number was limited to half a dozen, than it would be too impractical.

Sorry if I haven't read all the posts before, this is quite a wordy thread, but I still want to say mine. I think there's nothing inherently evil or good. it depends on how something is used. True, thyere are things that are more easily used for evil or for good, but still everything can be used for both. Take for example racism and mercy. You may say racism is evil and mercy is good, and generally it is so. But you can imagine a racist guy, thinking white men is better than black, who is also a good person, and think that since white are better they have the duty to take care for their lesser brothers. This guy may go to some african village and become a doctor and heal people, because he think he is better than them and therefore he has a duty to take care for them. He'll probably be a bit of a jerk to talk with, and will try to force his own moral values onto other people more than is healty, but overall he would have made something good out of racism. On the other hand, you may imagine a merciful guy discovering a friend is a phsycotic murderer. he would turn him to the police, but he takes compassion for him believing he's more brain-damaged than evil, and hides him and try to make him repent, all the while turning a blind eye on his deeds and allowing him to perpetrate more killings. So we have something evil coming out of mercy. That said, let's come to the specific of hemalurgy. yes, generally killing people to steal their powers is bad. Unless you do it to a volunteer that is motivated enough to sacrifice his life. many terminally ill could volunteer, since they are going to die anyway. "I'm dieing, my son. I'm too old and my heart too frail. But before I die, I want you to spike me hemalurgically and get the spike. You'll be gifted for the rest of yoru life, and I'll be happy to know that a part of my soul will live on in you. Take also that spike I got from my father when he died. You didn't knew? when I said I got my mental clarity from my father, I wasn't talking about genetics" or "I'm dieing, my emperor. the surgeon said the wound is too bad. Before I die, take a spike from me. give it to someone you trust. use that power to defend your people" It's a bit like an organ transplantation. you take away something someone need to live, and give to someone else. only difference is you do it just before natural death instead of just after. In fact, if there was hemalurgy in the real world, I would willingly donate an hemalurgicc spike taken from me to my relatives or even to my closer friends when in point of death. Just as I would give them my breath if there was awakening. Or I would consent to be sacrificed in some dark ritual done for a good purpose if there was a more traditional magic system. In the books, so far we only saw the evil use of hemalurgy. it would be like abook showing surgeons kidanapping people to steal their organs for transplantation. that would not make transplantation evil, it's just that surgeon that uses a questionable method.

I was wondering on what would happen if a'dams were used in some ways different from what they are intended. it is of course intended that all women involved can channel 1) a woman wears the a'dam on herself, binding her wrist to her neck 2) a woman hold another by the a'dam. that woman has another a'dam on her wrist, connected to another woman. and maybe more women, connected like a chain. 3) a woman has an a'dam on one wrist and another a'dam on the other, both connected to different women. 4) two women with 2 a'dams are holding each other, both having one leash on his wrist to the neck of the othern woman. 5) a woman has two a'dams on her neck, held by two different women 6) as 5, but with both a'dams held by the same woman Did jordan ever answered those questions at signings? do anyone has some notion on what would happen?

I don't see why not. a ccorpse pumped full of alcohol should not be able to move on its own either, yet it does. if awakening can reanimate muscles to work, i don't see why it should not reanimate also the brain, at least partially. Then we should address the question of how much of someone's intelligence is in his brain, and how much in his soul, and iff making a lifeless uses some remnant of that soul. Another good question could be: if you give your breath away, and then die, and are made a lifeless using the very same breath you gave away, would the lifeless work better/be more conscious because that breath belong to the same body? how much of a soul is in a breath?

I also got the impression that storrms are of cultivation. nature is adapted to them, and they are a source of crem, without which life would not be possible except on bacterial scale outside of shinovar.

most of it is likely. the only thing I don't find convincing is stormlight being of odium and being necessary to power other magic systems. why would odium want to give humans something akin to oil today? he would just have to withold the storms, and goodbye soulcasting! you'll have to learn to make a supply line the old way. goodbye kaladin the windrunner, welcome kaladin the common spearmen! I don't think roshar's society would be able to work without stormlight. not to mention crem, another thing left from storms that is used as fertilizer or as construction material. Again, the example is oil today. yes, tecnically everything we do with oil we could do with something else, but we would not be able to keep up the same mass production, and anyway we are not equipped to do it without oil because it was always easier to use oil in the first place. So if odiium is sending the storms and the stormlight is a byproduct of that, he should stop the storms to throw the world into chaos. the world is so adapted to them that they don't do much damage anyway. Also, an unrelated question: where do crem come from? I also assumed it was the soil, swept away by the storms and redeposited elsewhere by those same storms, but it don't work that way. With time, all the soil and nutritious substances should fall into the ocean, and never be recovered. when the storm hit aletkar, it has only blown on ocean, but it is still full of crem. that crem cannnot come from some other land. where does it come from?

probably the time between desolations was less than the 4,5k years we have in the book after the last. odium wanted humans to grow complacent, so it makes sense that he waited longer. But I think at least one century has to pass between desolations for humans to repopulate. less than that, and mankind would have depleted its numbers at every desolation, ultimately falling. How did the peaceful shin produce szeth is a good question. dude is nothing but honorable, so he would not have broken the rules of his people. yet he did, in such a horrible way that he was made truthless. and how did he discover he was surgebinder? there is no stormlight in shinovar. he has to have traveled outside before, but how all that happened? i remember brandon mentioning book 4 will be szeth's book, so will have to wait until then. 4-5 more years. damnit! where is a cadmium bubble when you need one?

Intersting question. I was going to write a long and elaborate answer about how it may be possible and what could be done with such an arm, but then another answer came to me: no, it is probably not possible, because an arm do not have a brain. lifeless being able to obey commands is because they have brains that still work a bit. remember, a lifeless squirrel is less smart and can take less commands than a lifeless human. Then it just came to me it was possible to make lifeless out of bone. So it is probably possible. So I got back the long answer and will put that one too. I think it would be difficult to make a lifeless out of an arm. it is said in the book that lifeless work so well because they have the body and shape of living things. an arm by itself is not something that lives on its own, so I would think it would not work as well as with a full body. However, it should still be possible to do it, maybe spending more than one breath. I don't think it would be possible to tie the arm back in place and just command it to act as your arm again. even vasher, with his awakened clothes, had to start the movement with his regular limbs before the tassels followed. on the other hand, it would probably be possible to order the arm to move in unison with the other arm. that would leave you able to make most tasks that do not require different movements with two arms. You could lift wheight, but not tie your shoes. With other commands you could impart other orders. for example, you could order the arm to fight for you as if it was your arm, or to coooperate with the other hand to tie your shoes. If you were a skilled awakener, I think you could do almost the same with an awakened arm than you do with the live one. In fact, I'm picturing now awakeners cutting away their limbs, making them lifeless and binding them back in place, obtaining limbs as good as the ones they had before, but that never grew tired and felt no pain. And now I just pictured some awakeners using lifeless limbs in more intimate activity; I will have to rinse my brain in acid to forget about it. Eww.

The way I understand it, soulcasting is of cultivation: it involves transformation of things, which fits well with cultivation. Not 100% sure though. But I'm sure the same magic cannot be shared by different shards. surgebinding is powered by honor, not by cultivation, and szeth being shin don't change that. mayeb we never saw szeth honorsspren, or maybe the spren never manifested the him in the first place. but surgebinding has to come from honor.