king of nowhere

didn't we already have that with vin and elend? seconded. it's a pity because they were good people once, but in their current shape... ewww, no thanks.

not a typo or an art error, but an error nonetheless: when delius explains that he's drinking expensive wine to spend money of the other merchants, he gives the price of a bottle at 1000 lak. the debt that cannot be settled, and that kept growing for centuries, is given at 700000 lak. that's 700 bottles of wine. I really doubt a sum that is ludicrous to even the most prosperous merchants cannot buy more than 700 bottles of wine. delius surely has drunk more than that in five years. I'm thinking a lak could be equaled to 1000 dollars roughly. 700 millions would be something well above the wealth of any merchant (discounting some big corporations that would not exist in taldain), while 70 millions would already be manageable. most important, the debt has increased a lot over centuries, and it was very big to start with. so a lak must be much more than 100 dollars, otherwise when the debt was smaller - say, only 200 thousand laks - it could have been paid. the other reference we have is 20 thousand to set up mining operations. I have no idea how much money it would take to set up mining in a preindustrial society. $ 20 millions seems a bit high, when there is no expensive machinery. so perhaps a bit less than 1000 dollars per lak. anyway if we take a lak to be 500-1000 dollars, then a bottle of wine, no matter how expensive, cannot really cost more than 10 or 20 laks. 30, tops.

i think brandon picked aluminium because it's super rare with early technology, but super abundant later. he knew his magic systems would get overpowered with advanced use, and he wanted to put in a limitation that would only arrive later in the tech three. as for in-universe reason, i don't think there's one given. it's probably just the way things are. like the exhistance of gravity

No. it would lock them only if you write down the measure. on the other hand, a modern instrument giving the value on a display and saving it in memory authomatically could be said to be writing it down. unless the instrument was programmed specifically to avoid it, maybe. does it mean that an analogic measure doesn't lock a spren and a digital one does? men, we need many more experiments now!

and how exactly would that make it worse than a regular armor? even discounting that, if i understood graendal correctly, it takes a specific weave of the true power to destroy cuendillar, and it may not be fast. of course a cuendillar breastplate and shield won't protect against a dedicated channeler, but i believe it's got to be more useful than a power-wrought sword anyway.

and it's mat, with one T. before seeing that it was in the wot subforum, i assumed from the title that the thread must be about some rock musicians

interesting idea... does it mean that if we could measure them with modern instruments after the ardent has measured it, we would see it changing slightly, within the error limits of the ardent measure?

but the book also says that once they are complete, they keep working evven if disturbed

yeah, because he totally doesn't have already more than enough open projects that he should end

eh, it's possible the project will fail, but if they manage to make a decent first season, it will already be something. although the last book, with all the cinematic battles, is probably the most suited for the screen. anyway, fantasy is selling a lot lately, and wheel of time was big, and this has the potential to make a huge load of money if they make it well. so, i believe they will at least try to make it good

not only. in rithmatist, we see people having a lot of hang-ups with rithmatists.

the fact that you can tell aes sedai by sight is a plot point several times. however, I agree it's not so important it cannot be changed, which is probably what they'd do. otherwise, the closest they could do to represent the ageless look is pai mei, from kill bill. someone who looks old and young at the same time. i don't know how much the look would work without white hair, or how recognizable it would be. or whether you can do that with any actor with make-up, or if you need the right face underneath. anyone else could have fulfilled that role. in fact, rand going back and forth between the wisdom and the major and thom is unlikely to figure in the tv show. screen time is at a premium, and movie makers always try to shorten scenes whenever possible. i think it's more likely either nynaeve will directly tell rand that moiraine can heal, or the major will tell it immediately. But I still think the two rivers is the right place to introduce thom. it would be more awkward to introduce him later and explain why he'd join the party, and it wouldn't gain anything.

I also wonder how they are going to represent aes sedai ageless faces. according to the book, it's something subtle enough that people not familiar with aes sedai won't pay much notice, but also distinctive enough that one who is familiar can tell an aes sedai by sight. I douubt it can really be done that way.

As all the emond fielders are very young (or at least look very young, in the case of nynaeve), it makes sense that they'd pick new young actors for those roles. I just discovered from reading brandon's twitter that racial issues were raised over the actors. Personally, while I default to imagining people caucasian unless described otherwise, I think the actors (who look indian to me) fit right, for a detail: rand had never seen blonde hair before leaving the two rivers. he mentions that when visiting the grimwell farm. So, if the two river population were caucasian, there would be blondes among them. I'm not aware of any blonde indian, so that seems to fit better. EDIT: the important thing was that all emond fielders, except rand, looked of the same ethnicity. say what you want about the value of diversity, they have been an isolated population who intermarried among each other for two millennia; that's bound to be uniform /EDIT EDIT2: actually, the emond fielders are described as blushing in several occasions, and other characters reacting to it. which implies they are not deeply black, as it would be virtually impossible to see the blushing on a person with a very ddark skin. so, dark enough that they have no blond hair, but light enough that they can clearly be seen blushing. indian seems just right/EDIT Perrin doesn't look nowhere near big enough, unfortunately. but it's hard to find someone with the right physique. you get plenty of actors with heavy muscles, but those are different from what I envision, which is someone who's not particularly sculpted from the gym, he's just very big. I think the only person who would have fit my mental image for perrin would have been bud spencer. which unforrtunatley would be way too old even if he was still alive

the lack of tour is good news. tours keep him from writing, and he already does a lot of those anyway.

sometimes brandon uses the same concept in different stories. I'm not talking of random similarities, or stretched coincidences. I'm talking that sometimes I really get the feeling that two characters or plots are different twists on the same concept - though of course that's subjective. I'm also not talking about a general theme, like "the guy that's introduced as the big bad at the beginning, isn't", which happens in almost all his books. and I'm not saying that's bad, either. the strongest for me is this is the story of siri and vivenna, but as soon as I read the oathbringer prologue, I realized it is also the story of dalinar and gavilar. the moment when it is revealed that gavilar the great king was trying to free the voidbringers, and wasn't such a great king after all, felt similar to the moment when vivenna sees t'telir and finds it revulsing, and the reader understands that she wasn't suited to marry the god king. It's really the first thing I thought, this is like with vivenna and this is both the quest for the atium in mistborn 3 (which is referenced as a quest in the annotations, brandon saying that he wanted to twist the general archetype by having the quest not turning up a miracolous solution) and the search for sandra of stephen leeds. with those two cases, i really get the ffeeling that brandon was using the same idea. And again, that's not bad, it works both times. there's also vin and lift vasher and dalinar raoden in elantris, and kaladin in brodge 4 but I don't feel such a strong correlation for those. gaotona in emperor's soul also tickles something in my mind, but i can't figure any other instance of "only honest man in a corrupted court" Do you also feel sometimes that different story arcs are similarly related?

me too, even today I see 47%. Maybe it's because he's already accounting for the fact that he'll run long once more? (I mean, has there ever been a single time when a book of his didn't turn out longer than planned?)

he's got too many tours. that eats heavily on his writing time.

demonic tutor is banned in legacyand restricted in vintage. I think a banned card is not a good comparison. I was basing myself on the legal equivalent, diabolic tutor lightning bolt is not restricted, but it is an early printed, very powerful card. if they stopped printing it and instead printed shock, which deals 2 damage with everything else being the same, it's because it was well above the power curve. alpha cards are also not a good comparison for power that's not what it does at all. it's written "pay 2, tap: destroy target creature". For the card to do what you said, it should be "whenever liss becomes tapped, you may pay 2: if you do, destroy target creature". and it would still be quite powerful, but presumably if you attack with it the opponent could kill it, so it would be on par with the ravenous chupacabra. I concede your points for everything else

shad invited brandon to australia to "compare their swords", am I the only one getting distracted by the double entendre? anyway, I'm not a regular watcher of youtube, as i vastly prefer written medium over video (language is also important: I read english as well as my mother language, but I stumble a bit on listening, especially on american accents), but I did see a few videos from shad, and I appreciated them. the guy looks like he knows what he's talking about. though I disagree on his statement on giants wearing padded armor, as the cube/square law dictates that armor would be more cumbersome for them than for regular humans.

it's been a few years since my last reread, but I seem to remember the point was that they look too young. the young aes sedai that captured rand may have been 25 and may have actually looked 25. nynaeve, if I recall correctly, is somewhere around 26, but she looks much younger. egwene is less than 20, and probably looks her age. it would have beeen perfectly plausible to believe that they were newly raised aes sedai who looked younger than their actual ages because some people actually do. heck, i knew a girl who was 24 and could have reasonably passed for 16. but setalle knows about runaway novices joining the kin, she took the simpler solution.

Some of your more recent card took a definite turn towards overpowered. chouta gives a +1/+2 to all creatures for a total cost of 2. effect is slightly weaker than inspired charge, that gives +2/+1 and cost 4. you have to play it in advance, so the opponent can see you have it, but on the other hand it cannot be counterspelled once it's on the ground. it resembles pride of conquerors, that gives +2/+2 for the same cost if you have city blessing. strong, but ok. warcamp prison does almost the same thing as lawmage binding, and it costs 1 less mana. hoid's counsel, I've seen cards do the same that cost 4. navani's rage, i don't think the swap from instant to sorcery is enough to reduce the price of lightning bolt from 2 to 1. the weeping seems stronger than sleep because you can cast directly after the opponent's untap phase. if it was a sorcery i'd have no problems with it. liss... costs 2, and with 2 mana can destroy any creature? way too cheap as a mechanism of removal requiring no cards. especially since a 1/1 deathtouch is still a useful blocker on its own. the stump: costs 1 and by simply being tapped can stop any removal. and it's already a 1/2. brightlord seems too cheap for what it does for lord ruler, it's a bit too easy to trigger its condition for hexproof and indestructible. vial of metals, i'd be more comfortable if there was a limit of charge expenditure. as it is, it becomes almost impossible to block the creature without losing something. karata does the same thing as mentor of the meek, but cheaper. atium gambit does the same thing as murder, but it's cheaper even before its cost reduction clause. the bands of mourning, on the other hand, are very underwhelming. if nothing else, they should also give indestructible

I don't know the names, but I assume that the tan guy is going to be perrin. and I always imagined him more muscled, the way he's described. rand and mat fit well, though. can't say about nynaeve before i see her with a braid

i'm aware of that wob, and it doesn't answer my question. yes, preservation listen and ruin speak, but why ruin only speak to spiked and preservation listens to everyone?

I'm rereading mistborn secret history, and I noticed that kelsier, upon ascending, can hear the thoughts of everyone. it's long been known that ruin can speak in minds but not read them, and preservation can hear but not speak. However, ruin can only speak to the spiked (and the insane), while preservation can hear the thoughts of everyone without distinctions. why this disparity?