king of nowhere

I would have to say that what we define as "middle age" is quite arbitrary. we pick two dates, the fall of the western roman empire and the discovery of america, and decide that in between is the middle age, but it's not like the farmers woke up on 13 october 1492 and said 'oh, look, the renaissance just started'. Originally, the middle age is considered a dark period between the greatness of the roman empire and the elightenment of the renaissance, but modern historians have shown this idea to be oversimplicistic. Technology kept progressing in the middle age, with new inventions like crop rotation and mechanical clocks, that romans din't knew. So we see the renaissance as a time of progress and the middle age as a time of stagnation, but in truth progress existed in both times. And in general the life of 99% of the population didn't change. The farmers kept farming, existance of printing press and spyglasses notwithstanding. The governments kept being feudal in many places, in others they gradually shifted to absolute monarchies. It was only with the industrial revolution that the llives of everybody were heavily impacted. So, a better term for the alethi society would be "preindustrial", and we can consider middle age and renaissance to be fairly simillar (I know a professional hystorians would kill me for that statement, but really, our knowledge of roshar is limited, and heavily approximated; we can say that the difference between medieval and renaissance is too small to be determined by our limited data, so we will consider them as roughly equivalent. While instead we would immediately notice if roshar had an industrial society). Now, one thing the renaissance had over the middle age is the birth of the scientific method, which paved the basis for the industrial revolution later. Maybe we can define the renaissance as the time when the seeds for the industrial revolution were planted, though I'm sure historians would tear my simplicistic definition to shreds. Anyway, we may wonder if roshar has a scientific method. And the answer is, maybe. Sure, we have seen people do stuff that really look like science. jasnah is taking a modern approach to her field, navani would be welcomed as a collegue by modern engineers, and those ardents we saw in one interludes were studing spren systematically - and, more importantly, they were taking measurements; the importance of measurements for science cannot be overestimated. So, it would look like roshar is at least experiencing the beginning of a scientific revolution. But then we must think again. Jasnah is an historian. As important as the study of history is to avoid the mistakes of the past or realize what is more likely to happen in the future, it does not advance natural sciences. And the other people we've seen doing sciencing, they were all studying spren and fabrials - manifestations of investiture, not natural phenomenons. So, it would seem that the civilization of roshar is taking a widely different course than in our world. instead of learning of physical laws, they will learn of the laws of investiture. Probably the eventual results would be similar, with infused gems taking the place of oil and coal, but it's actually a very different process going on. Long story short: rooshar is probably more akin to the renaissance than to the middle age, but it is very different from both times, different enough that it does not really matter whether you try to define it as "renaissance" or "medieval" because both are wrong. The only tag you can safely put on it is the more generic "preindustrial"

When siege weapons were mentioned, I assumed we were speaking of balistas, not cannons. Ancient romans used balistas (basically, giant crossbows that fired a spear as a projectile) and they were fairly accurate, since they were capable of targeting the leaders of the enemy armies with those. They should be accurate enough that hitting a shardbearer is reasonably possible, and powerful enough that they will punch through plate, or at least crack it significantly. In fact, those weapons would make more sense in alethkar than in our world. Also, I think people here are overestimating the effect of shardbearers on warfare. We are told that there are less than 100 sets of shards in the whole world, about half of whom in alethkar and jah keved. Many nations only have a set or two. The vast majority of battles have nothing to do with shardbearers, especially in the west. You don't stop using a weapon just because it is ineffective against one single unit the enemy has, especially when it is still effective against the rest of the army. Especially not when nothing else you have is really effective against it anyway. And you can see that even the alethi, with their many shardbearers, still use many things that are useless against sharbearers, like armors and shields and bows, simply because the army is not made of shardbearers. Hammers would be better than swords and spears against plate, yet most alethi troops are equipped with spears, because they work better against lightly armored targets, which are the majority. In a similar light, they did use metal armor on scadrial despite the presence of allomancers, because the advantage of having armor against regular troops is enough to compensate for the disadvantage when fighting allomancers. The concession they made to allomancy was making the armors so that they could be removed quickly. So I argue that roshar lacks gunpowder not because they have no reasons to develop it, but because as far as physical technology goes, they are fairly backwards. And that's caused by magic, because they are focusing research on magic technology rather than mundane technology. Shooting a bullet with a fabrial is apparently very difficult, so they don't have it. Making a spanreed is instead quite simple, so they have instant communication before they have gunpowder, while in our world the opposite happened. The fact that gunpowder would be difficult to store with the wet climate could help prevent its general use, but only after it has been discovered. We have no indication that gunpowder has ever been discovered on roshar. The disincentive on discovering it is not that it would be ineffective, but that studies are focused on fabrials instead of alchemy.

I would be very careful making assumptions about the agricultural productivity of roshar, because there are so many variables we don't know. we know you can harvest a couple handfuls of grain from every rockbud, but how many rockbuds can you grow in a hectare? one thousand? ten thousands? one hundred thousands? we don't even know an order of magnitude. How labor intensive it is? we know the farmers must spend a few days looking for plant parasites, but that's hardly what we need. How many people are needed to tend that hectare of rockbud coltivation? Ten? One hundred? We don't even know if you can get one, two or three crops in one year. And we don't know how much of the land is suitable for rockbud coltivation. Alll of it? most of it, except the most exposed places? very little of it, only some laits? too many variables we know nothing about. Estimates on crop productivity could vary by over an order of magniftude very easily.

I think it's pretty hard to force a steelrunner to do anything he does not want to. especially if you want them to experiment with a full metalmind. really, that's as if the nazis have given increasingly powerful guns to the jews because they wanted to see at what point the recoil became unmanageable. that's one of the few things they did not try; they were nuts, not dumb

Ah, see, here is a point where I disagree. While shards certainly influenced feudalism, I don't see them affecting technology. They certainly had nothing to do with the development of gunpowder; the argument that a musket wouldn't damage a shardplate falls flat because a bow deals even less damage to shardplate, and yet they keep using bows. Most of their wars are done among normal armies, and anything that works against light infantry is widely used. No, I think roshar technology, per se, is medieval at best. They don't have anything non-magical that wasn't available in the middle age, or maybe even in ancient rome, correct me if I'm wrong. It is roshar's magic that makes a difference. They have all kinds of fabrials, but they are a different kind of technology that cannot really be compared to our world. And that's why their technology seem so alien to us: because what is easier to do with fabrials is completely different from what is easier to do with engineering, and so they have stuff that we only achieved a few decades ago, but they miss other that we discovered centuries before. I expect that if they invented rifles, they would be done with acceleration fabrials rather than chemically powered.

I believe it is because preservation set up things in motion when he still was sane, because he had predicted what would happen later. and he could not stop those things from happening. basically, he made a plan that was foolproof because he knew he would have become a fool himself.

roshar is not medieval europe, but that does not mean that it cannot compare over some instances. yes, they are somewhat more enlightened and cosmopolitan than medieval europe (as much as you can use that word for a society with slavery and constant warfare, but medieval europe had the same, plus the whole "burning eretics and witches" that alethkar lacks). they also have some extra bits of technology, but said technology is rare and expensive and by no means available to the general people. the way they can compare is that they are preindustrial societies. the lives of the common people are similar. the way they make most goods are similar. the amount of wealth and resources that the society can generate is somewhat similar, soulcasters notwithstanding. So, it is clear that while the analogy "roshar = medieval europe" is not generally true, it can be used in specific circumstances. In that thread that you mentioned, for example, the comparison was made to determine the population density. And in that case, the comparison is absolutely reasonable. The amount of population living in a region is determined by the amount of food available, and since roshar lacks industrial agricolture, and in general seems to have the same farming techniques of medieval europe, then we can safely make the comparison that, at least in terms of food produced and population sustained, they can be compared to medieval europe. In fact, the problem with this assumption (something I highlighted in the thread) is not one of technology, but one of ecosystem, because rosharn highstorms and the crem they bring mean that they have no such thing as a desert or a barren steppe, and they can make agriculture everywhere. So, it is true that you ccan't compare roshar to medieval europe for everything. If you were saying "in medieval europe they knew next to nothing about china, so in alethkar they must know nothing of shinovar", then this would be a bad argument, because in roshar they have spanreeds. But if you say "in roshar they use the same farming techniques of medieval europe, so they must produce similar amounts of food", then the comparison makes sense.

Hey, I'm sure there must be some use to having a half dozen livers grafted to various parts of your body. If nothing else, you'd have the greatest poison resistance of anyone

Maybe it has been answered already, but I just got this idea: - we have confirmed that gold healing can repair the damage done by hemalurgy. - so you could spike yourself for your power (in a nonletal way) and then heal and still have your power. - then you could spike yourself with the spike you just made, so you'd have the same power twice as powerful. - repeat at will - profit? or, you could just trade your spike for one with a power you don't have. but the main point is, by spiking and healing you can get a spike for free. can it work? or we have some wob or wop that healing the damage of a spike automatically removes the power from the spike?

Blasphemy! Brandon got good on his own, he didn't steal nobody's skill. The reason those other writers are so slow is that they spend most of their writing time daydreaming on how they wish they were brandon sanderson. Brandon can devise a story so long it cannot be written, and then he can write it anyway.

I don't know if it is a good idea. As it stands after calamity, the reckonerverse is left as a normal superhero/supervillain setting. How many dozens of those have been done? As much as I trust brandon, I fear making more material on the topic is like beating the metaphorical dead horse.

oh, right, i wanted to mention that, but i forgot: on the other hand, the details in that scene don't seem all that consistent, so I think it's more like a small accuracy mistake from brandon than a feature of the powers. alas, I am sorry about it, but there are bands spoilers that are relevant to the discussion and must be treated that way.

Yes, but still it is notable there was no damage to the clothing

of course he does, that's not the final empire anymore. but I think the story does not need wayne to have a last name, and his character is better off without. i'm sure he doesn't use his surname very often anyway.

by the way, there is a "meta" indication of how broken steelrunning is in BoM (it is ok to spoiler it in other threads now, right?)

as for how he could lose despite zinc compounding, here is an explanation http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52851-this-actually-explains-how-the-lord-ruler-died-bands-spoilers/

It's all foreshadowing for the next book where sanderson will introduce a magic system based on capitalization. only the most powerful can access the ultimate power, that of caps-lock

it's possible, and it would explain how prof was harmed by his own powers used by someone else even if that wasn't his real weakness. but it should only count if they are used by someone else, otherwise obliteration would have incinerated himself. So that only leaves gifters as potential victims of that. so we have no way to verify that hypothesis

by the way, I am hazy on prof weakness. his weakness was failure, but his own powers negated his healing, so he was also weak to his own powers. How do those two things cope? He can't have two weaknesses, and him being wounded by his own powers gifted to someone else isn't related ennough to failure that it should be able to trigger the weakness.

yeah, i have similar question. but for a few of thoose we have answers. "How did obliteration get rid of his darkness, when his mentality is a perfect example for Calamity's twisted view on humanity" Obliteration faced his fear and had no calamity-induced darkness. he was just brain-damaged by himself. you may notice he wasn't selfish, as a difference. "Are the weaknesses internal to the powers but Calamity just ramped them up somehow? Are they connected to fear by nature or are they random and it's Calamity's fault that all of them ended up being connecting to fears?" I was under the impression that they start from existing fears, but they get ramped up by calamity. "Why did Calamity interact with Regalia? Not only is it a break of his no involvement rule, ... but ... which goes entirely against his motives as displaed in Calamity." because calamity wasn't sane either, and he has no consequence for breaking his own rules. As for why, he probably was curious. maybe he was hoping to understand something.

It's been a wild ride, and in the end I can't even sort out how I feel about the book. Oh, the ending makes sense; calamity was too powerful to be defeated by epic powers. And I figured it would be something like that the moment it was revealed Larcener had been calamity all along. I would have liked more background informations, though. And while I'd like to keep following the characters, an eventual fourth book would hardly be distinguishable from any other of the dozen superhero stories. It would probably be a let down, although I surmise sanderson could make it interesting enough.

well, that's more or less what happened with Ruin. we may be up to something there.

yeah, good point. if a soldier survives, he has more experience and will fight better, so you have better soldiers. if a bridgeman survives, you don't really gain anything. so there are good reasons, besides stric economical considerations, to use bridgemen as arrow bait to spare a few soldiers.

I think you can miss the exact point by one or two centimeters, because that's the accuracy I think one can reasonably get with the mallet thing. maybe with more precision you can achieve more refined effects. that's difficult to hit, but doable

the highstorms are a bother, but rosharan society seems to cope well with those. they build resistant houses, stay indoor when a stom is coming, and they seem to be fine. ship transport seem fine, at least judging from karbranth being a big port. They adapted to highstorms, they know when they come and wait them in safe places. inland travel is confined to dirt roads, but that's no worse than it was in our world before railways. if they can sail in the sea, they can also sail on rivers; again, they would need to know the floods caused by the storms, and wait them in safe places. As for farmers starving, in a medieval society under a corrupt government and heavy taxation, that was commonplace. Just as subsistence farming with minimal surplus is normal for a preindustrial society. It doesn't prove anything. Mind you, I'm not saying that alethkar has 50 million people. I'm saying it wouldn't be unreasonable it it did. I also agree that the actual number is lower, because otherwise they would probably field a larger army. However, I find 2 millions to be unreasonably low. this is a preindustrial society, so 90% of the population is needed to grow food. And the alethi keep fighting among them even as the war rages, so their army is bigger than the 100k assembled at the shattered plains. Unless every single person who doesn't produce food is a soldier, I guess they must be more. 10 to 20 millions seem reasonable to me. I read that at some point the roman empire had 50 million population and 500k soldiers, and I'm using the same figure of one professional soldier every one hundred people. As for the war losses, in that case they would be between 1 and 3% of the population in 5 years, which would be catastrophic today, but it is a small amount compared to the deaths by illness in a preindustrial society. On roshar they have good healtcare, so they have more young men to send to war.