king of nowhere

the windblades are not accumulating crem, they are being slowly eroded. I think, at least.

arsteel. but he's a lifeless at the moment, and that's what relevant for the quote itself

the problem is that they don't make any realistic assessment of the cadet's skill. you survive training? you pass. you got shot down? you fail. that way you don't get the best pilots, but the luckyest ones.

so, we're told that acclivity rings are so hard to come by, they are more rare than pilots. A fighter is literally worth more than its pilot. Now, in those conditions, you'd expect they'd try hard to not lose fighters. Instead, they routinely give the fighters to inexperienced pilots, even though they have better pilots. In fact, based on the book one may conclude that most fighters are shot down while piloted by cadets. Let's look at the numbers given. it is stated in the book that in their five years career, about half pilots are shot down; some of those get to eject. Anyway, for every two full pilots, the DDF can expect statistically to lose a fighter. We only have skyward flight to estimate cadet losses, but we are led to believe it's quite a common flight. We know the other groups have similar losses, though we know not how many are shot down and how many leave. In skyward flight we have bim, morningtide and hurl that are shot down and die. spin is also shot down, though she ejects. So we have 4 fighters down. We also have two graduates, jorgen and fm. We can expect one of them will be shot down in his career. So, we have 4 fighters destroied while piloted by cadets, and only one while piloted by a pilot. while those are too small numbers to be statistically accurate, from what we see 80% of DDF fighters are destroied while being piloted by cadets. Yep, that girl who ejected a few weeks before graduation (vigor, the one who was going to take spensa's place when she was stuck in the cave; but we know there are other similar dropouts), she totally failed. We clearly cannot trust them with a fighter. Instead, let's take a new recruit and send her in battle instead. That's certainly going to lower fighter losses! It's not even like they need to fly for experience; while they need to start combat training eventually, I doubt a few more months in the simulator would hurt, and I doubt the DDF lacks the resources to keep a couple dozen more cadets with a slower turnover. I hearby petition admiral ironsides to stop this inane practice of kicking out cadets who eject, stop this practice of sending cadets with only a couple months training into battle, build a couple more simulation rooms so they can train more cadets at the same time, and only send to battle people who are actually qualified. I'm sure this would reduce losses, both of pilots and of fighters.

I'm curious about the pictures, though. They are obviously fakes, but not obvious ones. And what's the point of making a fake of a fantasy book cover?

would be no better than awakening normal statues. On the plus side, highstorms mean that investiture on roshar is plentyful, so it should be manageable

Seconded. Moash was always angry and hateful. he never cared about protecting anyone. Kaladin was never truly hateful, for all his lighteys angst

fixed it

Thinking about spears and swords, spears are better weapons to fight in formation, as you can take advantage of reach or make a spear wall. swords are more versatile as individual weapon, and especially they are easier to carry around in your everyday life, but the spear has the advantage in a fight (again, reach). So it's quite peculiar that the alethi consider the sword a more noble weapon. although it works because they cannot restrict the use of the better weapon to the elite.

to make a comparison, liquid iron dissolves carbon in the same way that water dissolves salt. You can get steel with uniform composition if you stir it enough, just the same way as you can obtain saltwater with omogeneous composition. Hopefully it will read as less esoteric.

pretty much what quantus said. they had to get steel with exact composition, so they refined their metallurgy. We didn't because we never had the right incentive and it was never worth the cost anyway. Scadrian ashworld technology is close to industrial anyway, they fully had the capacity to get allomantic steel right. The extra work you have to put in making sure the carbon is evenly distributed will simply mean it sells for a premium.

on the other hand, it is also possible that during the time of war and strife most people were forced to give up their breath to the army. If we assume 50 breaths to make a skeleton lifeless, then kalad's army costed some 150000 breaths, which are easily harvestable within the population of hallandren. the dire threat of the war could be enough to justify taking the breath of so many people.

I would not say "obviously", but it is a distinct possibility. Having read defending elysium, I know the varvax imprison their dissidents, so maybe that's what doomslug is?

i had a problem with shallan's chapters in part 3. in part 1 they were fine. sometimes shallan is cringe-worthy, especially her inner turmoils, but that does not make her chapters bad. From what I remember of the book reaction thread, you are quite alone in your lack of appreciation. it's fine, not everybody likes the same stuff.

btw, there is a specific subforum for the wheel of time discussion. aside from that, i can only support what others say; it will be slow for a while, but it eventually gets better. and in retrospect the slow parts were not that bad

any idea how long the production may take? none of the articles i saw mentioned dates or deadlines

it's a much softer fantasy than brandon's usual, and the resolution feels too much like a deus ex machina to me, even though it was foreshadowed. I mean, "in the darkest hour the hero manifests some power he never had known before and fixes everything by magic" is not my favourite plot twist. and it's not like vin reaching the mist, where it tied with the greater cosmology and vin still had to work hard to reach that point. the protagonists felt too much like spectators. that said, i still liked the novel, but it's probably my least favourite among sanderson's work. davriel is a great character, though. I'd read any sequel to this as long as it contains davriel in it.

i was fearing terrible cliches between kaladin, adolin and shallan, but it went well. have faith in sanderson

the inquisitor can fly and stay out of reach of the chasmfiend's claws. attack from its blind spots. however, the inquisitor needs a weapon that is actually capable of hacking through the chasmfiend's carapace. the oobsidian axes they usually have are no good, they would shatter agains the hard shell. so, the inquisitor wins, but needs a better weapon. also, time, because killing a beast that big requires a slow progression.

sebarial is not a main character. he is a secondary character, a highprince allied of one of the main characters, who helps in some ways duyring the story. he fulfills this role well. not every character has to have big story arcs to "have a point"

I've been playing MTG for a long time, but I've never wanted to delve into the lore. The vast number of cards and apparently unrelated creatures always gave me the impression that the lore would be the worst kind of fantasy kitchen sink, with a huge amount of plotlines going nowhere and worldbuilding elements introduced for the sake of cool (and I absolutely hate cool for cool's sake; like introducing a piece of worldbuilding because it's cool and then ignoring it) and then forgotten. I mean, look at the current sets, the main creature types are dinosaurs, vampires and pirates! I consider this the storytelling equivalent of clickbaiting. then brandon wrote an MTG novel. that is making me question my previous assumptions. Brandon does not write fantasy kitchen sink and chull-pull plot twists. he writes cohesive worlds and solid plots. He definitely would NOT want to contribute to a body of lore that was the awfulness I envisioned. So i came to ask some feedback on MTG lore. Should I read brandon's story in it? Can I expect other stories to be similar to it?

None of that contradicts the MAG. eventual non-castrated members of the synod may be freeborn. Or maybe most of them were eunuchs because the others were women. Also, given what we know, by canon, of the breeding program, the MAG makes a lot of sense.

telsin was spiked and she used medallions, so no interference, at least nnot a significant one

Since nobody is being less lazy than I am, I am looking into the MAG. It says that all men not selected as breeders are castrated, meaning that some terris were selected and not castrated. So no, not all terris men are castrated. However, those selected for breeding live as prisoners in the breeding compounds, so every terrisman you could meet in the streets is castrated. those chosen for breeding were 1 in 8, among those whose families didn't have a past of feruchemy or rebellion. there are a few non-castrated children that were either smuggled out of the compounds in secrecy, or born in secrecy - any terris woman not in the breeding program was executed if pregnant, and any children thus conceived was also executed. So, those free-born terris were rare

it was more detailed in the mistboorn adventure game supplement of terris. I'm too lazy now to go look for it