king of nowhere

stomrlight makes plants grow, but can they sustain on just stomrlight? what if they lack proper nourishment? how much can they just use stomrlight for it? we can't say for sure how much plants sussist pon stomrlight without answering that question

On the other hand, we can consider that those characters are pretty realistic. I mean, most of them are in their late teens or early twenties. A lot of them are still a bit immature. Also, they have the prejudices that are common in a closed society without mass media.

Gemhearts are for trapping spren. Creatures on roshar live in symbiosis with spren, and use investiture, and that's what they need gemhearts for. the parshendi, specifically, needed them to soulcast food, and fought the alethi over them for it, but that's irrelevant for the ecology. As for moving food and fertilizer around, the job is done by highstorms. highstorms bring investiture, which is important for all creatures with a gemheart. it also brings crem, which is fertilizer. without crem, all the nutrients would move to the ocean eventually. on earth this is countered by plate tectonics, always pushing new rocks to the surface. but on roshar there are no plate tectonics, no way to renew phosphorous. So, I'd say roshar would die without highstorms. You are also wrong about the only plants being rockbuds. those are the equivalent to shrubs. we have seen full fledged trees. some are described with some detail in shallan's sketches, or in edgedancer.

I have a friend who voiced a similar problem. "ppoor kaladin, I can't take any more of the stuff happening to him"

ok, all clear. thanks

Recently I've noticed a couple of threads showed the posts not in order when I visited them. instead of being sorted chronologically, they seemed to be sorted with the OP first and all the answers soorted by number of upvotes. It's very annoying because I can hardly keep track of what I already read and what I didn't. I looked a bit at the settings but I can't find anything I may have triggered accideentally to achieve that effect. How can I fix it?

I've never heard that before. When did brandon said that? Can you link? Maybe there was no strict need for it, but it certainly made a lot of sense for it to happen. Kaladin hasn't been close to a girl his age, much less an attractive one, in years. And they also share some deep connection, while in the middle of an adrenaline rush. It's natural that he would get a crush on her. If I were to live a similar experience, I would also get a crush on the girl, unless she's someone i'd really loathe. It would pass in a few weeks or months at most if there was nothing stronger behind it. As for shallan, she also hasn't been around much. this is, like, the third boy of close age that she can spend time with. I think in the past the genders were kept much more closeted because that way they would never figure out how crappy was their arranged pairing. They liked each other because they literally knew nothing better. We should not underestimate this factor in many characters who had closeted youths. And kaladin has a lot of charisma. He leads people because he makes people want to follow him, and Shallan is not immune. Again, adrenaline helps. So it's also reasonable that she'd develop feelings for him, and that those feelings would wane with time in front of the lack of a more substantial connection.

It could easily be justified by it being a colloid of aluminium nanoparticles in an organic matrix. Aluminium blocks investiture only in metallic form. And aluminium is a common element, but due to its reactivity it is never, or almost never, found in metallic form. If ioonic aluminium could block investiture, then most common rock would, depending on the required aluminium concentration. On the other hand, biochemistry could easily reduce aluminium to metallic form if evolution pushed it that way. And aluminium is abundant in sand - I mean, sand is mostly silicon oxyde, but only because silicon oxyde is the most common rock. Aluminium oxyde is also very common, and any sand should contain at least a few % of it. So, living creatures could easily develop a way to use aluminium. However, an aluminium foil would not mix well with organics. And most important, it would not dissolve in water. But both issues could easily be solved by havin fine aluminium dust encased in a mucus-like substance. Aluminium dust would not present structural problems to living creatures. It can be spread out eeasily. Aluminium dust is also much more reactive than bulk aluminium because of increased surface, but it can easily be fixed by coating the aluminium dust in a protective layer. Either by natural passivation (coating the grains with naturally inert aluminium oxyde) or by the action of specific proteins binding on its surface, the aluminium grains can be made unreactive and generally non-problematic to the living creature, while still being metallic aluminium. This aluminium dust could then be secreted within a sebaceous substance. Think of like how human skin is lubricated by a thin layer of fat that protects it from water. Put the aforementioned aluminium dust in it, and it could become terken. Or the aluminium dust could just be encased in a shell. Anyway, if you dissolve the organic matrix in water, the aluminum dust is released, still protected by whatever passivation mechanism was protecting it before. Spray that solution on a person, and you have a person coated in fine aluminium dust. This doesn't last forever, as either the aluminium will eventually get oxydized, or it will be washed away. Of course, it could also be something unrelated and specific to sand mastery. But it could work with aluminium.

I am not against romance, but I am against triangles. I don't like them for a long list of reasons that could be basically summed up as them hampering the narrative. And while romance is an important part of life, at times of great strife it is generally put in the background as people are somewhat busy. I voted on extremely satisfied with how it was handled because it never became a bother. Shallan didn't suddenly become stupid and didn't suddenly jeopardize the world for the sake of her love interest, adolin and kaladin didn't develop problems, and all the above things that did not happen did not derail the narrative or provide obstacles that would feel contrived and would make me want to smack the characters. I especially dislike "love makes people stupid" category of tropes, and they are almost always the consequence of triangles. I generally loathe people acting stupid, especially when there is a lot at stake, and being in love is not a good excuse.

I've never seen or heard of a smedry with two talents, so maybe they don't get both

you can soulcast pretty much any resource, but it takes a lot of gemstones to produce large amounts. So, you can get needed materials in a pinch, but you can't sustain an economy long-term that way. I believe their presence changes little on large scale economy. as for your analysis, I only have one remark: near the end, you say that taylen may conquer the frostlands against vorin expansionism. I doubt it. taking lland on the continent would give alethi troops the chance to face the taylens on land, which is exactly what they want to avoid. I would say, even if alethkar claims the frostlands, they'd still be unable to invade. they could certainly organize a landing across the longbrows strait, but the taylen navy could then arrive and plug the gap, leaving the invasion force isolated. without influx of reinforces and materials, an alethi invading army would be lost. it is more or less a similar situation with the siege of great britain during the world war: hitler could have sent troops across the strait, but they would have remained isolated as soon as the royal navy arrived to disrupt suppplies across the english channel. soulcasters could mitigate tthe need for supplies somewhat, but still, there is a limit to how long an army can go

I'm pretty meh. White sand already showed that sanderson's style is not fit for graphic novels. too much plot and dialogue to be conveyed.

It's far from the first similar announcement I read, and nothing ever came from them. I'm not an expert on the media industry, but this doesn't seem all that different from the others. I attune the rithm of skepticism, and I will keep it until I am at the movie theater watching the end titles.

they did. those people iin the know-how knew calamity was an epic in space. as for glass, it's hard to see, even with a telescope. probably it was mistaken for the light aura of the epic.

true, but keep in mind that physical fitness at old age is very dependent upon the person, and that someone with rregular training can do a lot of stuff that wouuld be assumed impossible. You only have to look at badass grandpa on tvtropes, go to the real life folder, there are people running marathons or climbing mountains in their ninties. I have to say, dalinar feels a realistic depiction of a 55-years-old very fit for his age.

as far as aging, the reduced gravity should mean less problems with the whole bone structure, particularly the spine, and possibly less heart problems too. On the other hand, more oxygen means a greater oxidative stress. I'm not sure how that translates exactly into aging, but I'd certainly surmise a greater likelyhood of cancer. Rosharans would probably look older than they are, because it also hits the skin. but they'd be fitter.

at this point the question is why simple knives and not full macahuitl, which is basically a stave with obsidian blades embedded at the edges; it has the shape of a sword, cuts like a sword (better than most, actually) and it's the sword's substitute in cultures that did not have the metallurgic knowledge to make swords. It's inferior to swords because the obsidian blades dull or shatter more easily and it's not worth much for piercing - which also forced the aztecs to fight in more loose formations - but it's the best you can get without metal. Possibly they didn't use macahuitls because of encumbrance issues.

Still not working. Does it maybe require some particular patch/expansion?

Now it doesn't crash games on different maps, but it still won't start on randland. I tried with 3 city states and 5 civs, according to the instructions. Maybe it's map size? I used it small and medium, and didn't launch either way

I tried it, but it crashes the game. I tried disabling every other mod, it still crashes. Even when I'm not playing randland, having the mod activated crashes the game. Any suggestion on how to fix it?

While I also don't rate it as sanderson's best work, there is one thing I greatly admire: so, the plot was set up with the protagonist having to achieve an impossible task in 100 days. But laws of storytelling state that of course she would succeed, so there was a serious risk of losing any tension. I mean, I never even remotely doubted that the emperor soul would be fixed. Restoring tension to that by all the interplay with the arbiters and gaotona was really well done

yeah, something like pratchett's the last hero would have been great. Frankly, when I read that white sand would be a graphic novel first, I was expecting something like that, and not a comic. Incidentally, why is the name graphic novel used to designate something that is actually a comic?

no idea, although they are roughly contemporary with the second trilogy. A better question, however, is what actually happened there

To me, it's evidently the kind of actiivity where you'd have 1% to 5% casualties in training. Something acceptable to ancient scadrial, where houses treated their children as resources. Not with more modern sensibilities. Steeljumping is also fairly dangerous when you're skilled, too. I guess it can be as easy as walking for someone trained; well, you ever tripped and fell while walking? In years and years, it can happen. And when it happens with steeljumping, you die. Although I'd say in this case the risk is more or less akin to that of a car accident, i.e. something we consider acceptable ffor the commodity it provides.

by the way, i wonder about coinshot training. we always see characters who are competent at it, but when you're novice, a wrong steeljump is easily fatal. when you are falling, you only have a couple seconds to find an anchor and push, with failure being often fatal. if you instead manage an off-center push, you are going to slam into a wall at high speed. even a trainer ready to cath you can only help you so far; the times are tight enough that he's not a guarantee of safety. I'd figure casualties during training would be quite common, and I have a hard time figuring a way to reduce them. Unless you have the capacity to set up a huge training center where everyone is attached to ropes