king of nowhere

it wasn't a tattoo with kaladin, but a scar. and kaladin had a tattoo that was "healed" by stormlight, and we had wob that if kaladin had accepted the tattoo as part of himself like the scar, the tattoo would have remained. Which brought me to think that if the tattoo would have remained, maybe healing could also have reconstructed it, which led me to posting this thread eventually.

that's actually a really good idea, since gemhearts are actually parts of their bodies

I'm talking about the technology that was present before the lord ruler. tlr suppressed a lot of technology because he deemed it dangerous for the society he wanted to create. Which brings to the point I made that the originators only had that technology on paper, which is an entirely different thing than actually knowing that technology.

yes, but sazed stated immediately thereafter that he also left the whole content of his metalminds, repeated verbatim. I'd quote you from the epilogue of hero of ages, except that I have the paper copy and don't want to go look for it and rewrite it all. Given that the technology on scadrial pre-ashworld was late renaissance/early industrial, they didn't advance that much: they covered in three centuries what our world covered in one. On the other hand, if you consider how scarce was their population - less people means less scientists and inventors - that they had to rebuild everything from scratch, and that they didn't really knew their starting technology - sure, they had books explaining it, but they totally lacked all the practical know-how; there's a vast gulf between having an instruction manual to do something and being actually capable, much less good, at doing that something - then their progress went remarkably fast. As for harmony taking more direct action against the set, well, pointing wax and wayne against them is pretty much taking direct action. For some reason, all shards we've seen so far have been reluctant to use their powers directly, preferring to use human(oid) pawns.

that got me thinking: does stormlight heal depression? is it enough of a disease for stomrlight to recognize and fight it? because that would make kaladin twice as manic when he took in stormlight: once because of increased power, and once for suddenly not being depressed anymore.

kaladin has been stated canonically to suffer from depression. A depression that he has to fight back every day. people with real life depression issues praised brandon for so well depicting someone suffering from that illness. I don't know if it could fit more with bipolar disorder because I'm not an expert in the field.

regarding the "he should help the people more to make them happy" thing: hystorically, better life conditions for everyoone never translated into more happyness. Consider how poor the people were in the middle age. Even the privileged lived in houses that lacked what we now assume to be the barest minimum of comforts. Consider how rich we are today in comparison. Then consider which of the two populations, the middle age or the contemporary one, was more resentful towards the government. Or was more likely to complain about how hard their life is. See, human happyness does not depend on your objective level of whealt or fulfillment, but on expectation. If everyone is poor, you think it's normal to be poor, and you do not perceive yourself as such. Same is if everyone is rich. People becoome happier when things get better, but then they get used to the new situation and stop being happier for it; that's why the population was happy during the years of the economic boom, but it isn't happier now, despite us being still more rich than during those years. Therefore, no matter our technologial progress, no matter our power, no matter our rights, a lot of people will always perceive themselves as poor and downtrodden. And therefore, harmony protecting humankind could not make humankind any happier; it would only make it more spoiled. No, the only thing I'd do different in that regard if I were him would be to add something like "seek scientific progress" in my catechism.

wrong thread, sry. delete this

from the letter, we know the shardholders of odium and autonomy were in good relations and at odds with hoid. but for a better defence of that theory, you'd need someone who actually supports it. I wass merely stating it as a possibility.

some think that trell is autonomy, and he's working for odium. the possibility is at least implied by some words of brandon: odium would work with someone else if he was in control, and the shard of autonomy would make a lot of sense on how lassie was behaving in shadows of self.

How is that any different, in terms of investiture needed, from regenerating the body? a missing finger does not regrow on its own, so you're not just speeding up the body healing. even if you were, making a new finger would require energy, and wayne never commented on feeling hungry after healing. Anyway, I agree that getting diamonds to regrow that way is too far-fetched. tattoos are the only thing i'd give a realistic chance of regrowing.

i never felt a wild west vibe in the books anyway, except in the first two prologues. the story takes place in a city with a technological level around 1900. doesn't seem much wild west to me. nor does it feel steampunk, it doesn't include the most common elements i associate with it - namely, a dark setting and strange steam-based technology. in general, i didn't feel a particular resonance with any particular subgenre.

This idea came to be because we know that gold restores you to match your congitive self. If you have a scar, a tattoo, a piercing that are part of your cognitive self, those won't be removed by gold healing - nor by other investiture healing, seeing as how kaladin couldn't heal his slave brand. So, if a tattoo is not removed, is it a stretch to assume that if your skin get damaged, gold healing will restore your tattoo? we know it can regrow stuff that normally does not regrow, like full limbs; pigments and somesuch doesn't seem too far-fetched. I had this scene where a bloodmaker could make a fortune by getting a piercing with an expensive diamond on it, then ripping the diamond off and regrowing it, over and over. So it's probably not going to happen. But I can still hope... But yeah, accepting that getting piercing rings to regrow would be too much, prostetics are a more reasonable idea. say that you have a fake tooth, and you are so used to having that fake tooth that you do not regrow your natural tooth; could you regrow your fake tooth then? If no, why not? teeth are inorganic matter anyway. And yeah, the prospect of becoming rich by selling your teeth fillings is still on the table!

Also, the wild west part is mostly a deconstruction, with wax trying to apply tropes from it (the barkeeper knows everything, the duel at dawn, the gentleman adventurer...) and facing the hard reality at every step. though having a reputation actually helped

I feel the same. When I became a DM for D&D, I made a rennaissance fantasy world because I wanted to break the trope of stagnation. But I never actuallly considered to bring it to the next steps, i.e. industrial era, information era, and future era. If nothing else, I love the idea to take the fantasy world and show it developing through the ages.

@happyman, that would be a very neat way to wrap it up. Though the upvote is not because I agree with you, but simply because you quoted correctly obscure modern physics. It's something someone should ask peter, seeing as how it has potential implications for how the cosmere works at a fundamental level

i made the connection that it may be an alkali metal because it exploded with water, but i see no way to ascertain exactly which metal it is. though i would discard litium, as others have said it's not explosive enough.

See? See? They are already preparing for the inevitable I may add that another thing they can do is cut away a minor plotline and make a novelette out of it. 400k would be the same size of words of radiance, which is 398k. For some reason, I assumed wor to be at around 500k.

Anyone wanna bet that the word count is gonna exceed the target by a fair amount? Say, at least 450k?

that is linked to a greater idea: is future written and immutable? And, in general, how does the universe work on a fundamental level? Because, if future is written, then it is possible to perfectly predict future. And atium should work as you do. But, if future is not written, then you cannot perfectly predict it. You can make informed guesses. You can calculate. And since a shard is much smarter than a human, a shard can predict the future so well that, at least for a few seconds in advance, the prediction may as well be flawless - except for the case of backwards-influencing loops, which causes paradoxes that make the calculation impossible, hence the multiple atium shadows when two people are burning it. But the future shown is not a predestyned, predetermined future, but only the most accurate calculation/prediction that a shard can make, then something truly random like quantum mechanics cannot be predicted, hence it - and anything related to it - should give many atium shadows. And i really get the impression that this second case is the correct one. Not only because I always found the "you can't fight destiny" kind of lame, but because it fits with what we know of shardic future sight: a tree of branching possibilities, and the more in the future you go, the more the branching. If there are branching possibilities, it means some events can go many ways. And so what I try to do is simply to generate a lot of truly unpredictable branches, some of them harmful to the atium burner. In fact, I theorize that with the right kind of training/state of mind, where one is actively trying to be unpredictable, it should be possible to split one's atium shadow in a few different ways with the sole power of your capability to make different decisions. Again, that depends on a fundamental question on how the human mind works: are our brains but very advanced algorithm-sorting deterministic machines, such that in the exact same situation and with the exact same knowledge we would always do the exact same thing? That actually fits well with how atium works, since the only thing that can change the atium shadow is other precognition, which is changing the knowlege that the brain has at the moment of taking the action. Or maybe are we quantum machines, our decision processes depending on a cascade of chemical reactions starting with but a single atom? In that case, we'd still be algorithm-sorting machines, but with a fundamental difference that some real random would be present in our decisions; that would split our atium shadow every time the decision is close enough that one single atom in our brain receptors could make it go either way. That doesn't seem that likely, as it would create random atium shadows sometimes. Or, we have a divine-granted free will that can make decisions that are not deterministically predictable. In which case, while most times our knowledge and skill and personality would lead us to a decision univocally, there would be cases when a person may really take different decisions, and therefore the atium shadow would split. And, given that brandon is religious, and that gods play an important part in his universe, I'd be surprised if this was not the case. You see, it's surprising how much science and phylosophy can be called into account to answer a technicality on the working of precognition. Though, I have to admit, the reason I like the random idea that much is that I have my own setting with a magic system with precognition, and that precognition is based on the overlapping of all possible futures, so in that case random is really the best way to counteract it.

yeah, that's exactly what i hope. there is a wild shadow moving around like crazy, and when it actually collapses it's too late to dodge. but yeah, i admit it to be very impractical. aluminium is much better. but it feels like cheating...

would it? A subatomic particle is not in a place, it has a certain probability of being in a certain area; it is nowhere and in many places at the same time. It's not like throwing a dice. If you throw a dice, you get a chaoticaly unpredictable trajectory, but still something that can be calculated with enough computational power. A supercomputer could do it, a shard could do it better. But a subatomic particle could not be predicted that way. If you could see it, it would not leave a neat atium shadow. So I surmise that kind of random would defeat even atium. Yeah, of course augmenting your speed with steel is the better method, since your reaction time is so fast you can defeat the atium burner no matter what he does - if effectively counts as checkmating him. But it lacks style. Another way would be through colorless poison gases or bacteriological weapons, since those give no visual clues and therefore leave no atium shadows.

another possibility is through the use of genuine random. we know that is something can happen many ways, then it leaves multiple atium shadows. I'm thinking something like a rifle mounted on a vibrating support and with a mechanism that will make it fire at random intervals (using a good quantum random generators, that should not be predictable with atium). something like that would generate so many shadows that it would clutter the visual; also, it would be phisically impossible to dodge them all, leaving the atium burner to rely on luck.

actually, i don't know how much backup metalminds would have been effective. with the mist, vin was capable of pushing heavily invested metalminds piercing the body. it stands to reason that she would have ripped out any other metalmind tlr could have embedded in him. so, as powerful as he was, he still had that limitation. though it would have hellped against someone ripping off his bracers with mundane means. Also, there's to consider that tlr didn't have access to nicrosil besides what he may have made at the well of ascension. his capability of manufacturing backup metalminds was limited. And I don't think nicrosil would last a milllennia inside someone's body without oxydizing or spoiling in some other way.

to be fair, you could remove them by hand, if you caught him by surprise when he wasn't burning/tapping anything. that'show it went in one of the drafts, actually. and while nobody knew those bracers were his metalminds, in fact nobody even knew he had bracers on the upper arms because he always wore sleeves, still there were keepers around who could figure it out. so keeping a backup of his most important metalminds - say, age, speed of body, speed of thought, healing - embedded under his skin wouldn't have been too paranoid.