king of nowhere

I don't think the bind points can be THAT specific. The inquisitors got along by hammering a spike with a mallet through the heart of a person. A persson who is tied hands and feet, but can still squirm. How accurate can you really be when planting a spike like that? So there should be a passable chance of hitting the right point. As for those characters not letting themselves be hit, I was thinking of the scene where the lord ruler ignores people stabbing him when he confronts kelsier, or hoid staring down jasnah. And I thought, "wow, if that skaa soldier that stabbed the lord ruler had actually known about hemalurgy, it would have been an easy kill". Of course, if they realize their opponent is trying to do that, they won't stand still. in that case, a regular person won't have a chance, but if hoid and the lord ruler were trying to kill each other, that's the way they would try to use. And that's actually a good reason for keeping some metalminds with no investiture. at least enough to heal back your feruchemical gold power and then heal with your other metalminds.

Some characters in the cosmere are almost immortal. A gold compounder, a radiant full of stormlight, an elantrian with good knowledge of the healing aons. But hemalurgy only requires a metal spike through the heart, and it can steal whatever regenerative power one has. It has been speculated that with some powers you could heal the damage done to your spiritweb by a spike, but it does not matter if you lose the power in the first place. One limitation of hemalurgy preventing every arrow or bullet that strikes true to become a spike is that the person doing the stabbing must have the intention of creating a spike. But that just means that whoever knows something about bind points can make a spike. as far as we've seen, it doesn't require that much practice: inquisitors barely knew what they were doing, they only knew to plant spike through the victim's heart to point X in the receiver, and it worked for them. So, does the above mean that someone with knowledge that hemalurgy exist could easily kill the lord ruler, or even hoid, by stabbing them in the heart with the right metal with the intention of making a spike (a knife made of multiple metals would be good, cause there would be more chances that at least one of those metal is the right one). Since those characters feel safe in their powers and never bother to dodge attacks, it should definitely work.

Can it not? as far as we know, horses, chicken, grass, and everything that resembles our world comes from Shinovar. I just assume that horses live normally in shinovar, and are exported at a premium. That's why they are so expensive, they have to be imported from the other side of the world. Or they have to be bred locally, but that requires massive resources to protect them from storms and to feed them - a horse can't get enough food by waiting for the rockbuds to come out, then taking a few bites, then waiting again; you have to feed them grain. Which does qualify for "the rosharan ecosystem cannot support warhorses" (I think that's even a quote from brandon or peter) in that without men to provide for them, they could not survive. Speaking of ecosystem, the original post was dealing with the carrying capacity of the environment regarding to substituting all the dead bridgemen. The argument focused on how many losses the bridge crews did actually take, but there is one other factor to take into account: roshar's population density. It appears most people assume roshar would be scarcely populated because of its hostile environment, or at most to be as populated as medieval europe - I myself assumed that until a few minutes ago. Then I realized, roshar is probably more populated than that, because its ecosystem is actually more favorable to human settlement. Consider that in our world very few areas are well suited for intensive human activity. 50% of the world population lives on 1% of the world surface, or something like that. You need fertile soil and you need the right rain pattern to make large scale agricolture; with modern technology it is possible to skip both if you can sink lots of resources in providing fertilization and irrigation. Many regions are too dry, or too cold, or too nutrient-poor, to generate much food by themselves. Then take roshar. It is smaller than earth, and it has less landmasses. But all the landmass is in the tropical or temperate region - maybe the southernmost tip has a polar climate, but it's likely still temperate cold - by the vegetation equivalent, it looks like cfc on the Koppen classification, and you still have trees in that climate. The lack of axial tilt means lack of any real winter, so you should have a long growing season. All roshar surface is warm enough to cultivate. There are highstorms, so there is no such thing as a desert on roshar. sahara, gobi, atacama? no such thing. All roshar surface has plenty fo water. And last, soil nutrients; highstorms carry crem, which is a natural fertilizer. So, while it looks barren and inhospitable to us, to the adapted life of roshar, all of roshar surface is a very favorable environment, and virually all of the surface can sustain extensive agricolture. It is fully reasonable then for the alethi population to be much higher than estimated, maybe well above 50 millions. The obvious counterargument to this is that we see a lot of wilderness. Yes, it's a good argument, but keep in mind that those we see are the very most inhospitable lands on the planet. roshar proper is warmer and more shielded by storms.

potentially yes, but in order to become a spike, the spear needed intent. so, either the lord ruler or ruin wanted to make a spike out of kelsier. the lord ruler hardly had an interest in it, and at most he may have made a spike for inquisitors, one with an allomantic ability and very little relation to kelsier's soul. and ruin had no interest in bringing kelsier back; he'd done his job, now he could only mess things about. so it would take some contrieved reasons for the spearhead to become a spike.

training is the most expensive part in a medieval society. you get this guy and you have to pay him and feed him for one year or two without getting anything out of him, just to turn him into a soldier. So, let's assume that since the bridgemen are unarmored and the soldiers are, the parshendi arrows would kill one soldier instead of ten bridgemen. Then, as long as the cost of replacing ten bridgemen is lower than the cost of replacing one trained soldier, Sadeas' tactics make sense. And the book explicitly states that it is so. The assumption is not totallly unreasonable; it may require a bit of a stretch, but it can be true, so I see no reason to mistrust the book on it. It is possible that in the long run it would have caused a shortage of slaves, with consequent rise of prices, and it won't have been a feasible strategy anymore; but that didn't happen in the five years of the war. Apparently, slave merchants went from all over the world to bring their "wares" there. While the isolation of the shattered plains may have driven up transportation cost, the demand was so large that the highprinces could afford to buy in bulk, saving money.

why there wasn't some shield bearer running in front of the bridges was specifically addressed in the books: sadeas tried it, and the parshendi then gave up on the bridgemen and focused the rest of the army. sadeass made calculations, decided he lost more money if the parshendi shot the army rather than the bridge crews, so he sent the bridge crews unarmored. that's explicitly stated in WoK. Maybe in the long run it's not as good, but many economic strategies rely on making a profit in the short term, and reinvest it to deal with the long term consequences. I don't like that way of thinking because I tend to think in the long term, but it appear to work. At least for the people moving the big money, at least. Now, I have considered saving time by using two crews for each bridge: a carrying crew and a charge crew. The carrying crew only carries the bridge to the final plateau, then the charging crew takes the bridge and get killed by the parshendi. You lose just as many bridgemen, but the benefit is that the carrying crew does not take losses, so you can train it; a crew of healty excerciced runners will carry the bridge faster, giving you some extra time to reach the gemheart. The expendable crew will be able to keep up because they don't have a bridge to carry for most of the way. But the problem is how fast the army can move. the soldiers are armored, can't go fast. so it may be that there would be no gain with that strategy. and sadeas would have to feed more bridgemen, the permanent crew with good food.

Impossible, because spook ruled in the north and kelsier in the south at the same time. with the level of powers displayed by the bands of mourning it wouldn't be completely impossible to make the north-south trip overnight with steel speed, but it would still be awfully impractical to do it on a regular base. i doubt it would have been feasible to rule the two places at once.

I think you are taking "tasteless" too literally. It is not used in a strictly technical "without any taste", but rather in the vernacular sense of "tastes like dishwater". And yes, the reason is probably that getting all the molecular mix that gives the flavour would be extremely complicated. With all our chemistry, we still haven't managed realistic artificial flavors. I suppose soulcast food is somewhat like that.

interesting. We know hemalurgy requires intent, so you can't accidentally making a spike by stabbing someone. On the other hand, the intent might not be yours: ruin is watching, and if he has the intent to make a spike, a spike will be made; see spook's case in hero of ages. And ruin was definitely looking and definitely wanted tlr to die. however, that's quite a redundant idea. with his atium metalmind lost, tlr was doomed to die of old age soon enough, stabbing notwithstanding.

Yes, it can. You say that the "pattern" is a few quick repetitions and a few slow repetitions, and that's the "pattern" of the greater metals, the difference being the exact number of repetitions. That's because you can find a pattern in pretty much everything if you look hard enough for it. The human brain is made to look for patterns, and it find them even when there are not. Also, in that time people thought that gold and atium were paired, so it makes sense that they would think there was a pattern common to them. And the lord ruler certainly wanted them to keep thinking that atium was paired with gold. So it makes sense that they would see a pattern where there was none, and they had no reason to question it. Also, as I said, both are temporal metals, so they could have a similarity in that.

Size of the armuy and size of the bridgemen forces are unrelated. Each highprince had an army of trained soldiers that was roughly 10k strong, totaling the 100k of the whole alethi army on the shattered plains. Bridgemen are not part of the army. they are slaves, or they are poor people who came to enroll hoping to find a job. sadeas had up to 1600 of those, with a high turnover. but his army was't big. his bridgemen kept dieing and being replaced, but he never had a large number at the same time. Yes, the reason good will win in the end is that large-scale evil is not sustainable in the long run . It's pretty much implied by the definition of evil; if it didn't have some bad repercussions that will eventually screw up everyone it probably wouldn't be evil. Phylosophical considerations apart, since a medieval-like society has a shortage of economic resources and trained people, but it produces a constant stream of poor people, then it makes some sense that sadeas would want to save the people who had the expensive training and expensive equipment at the cost of those who were in large supply. But, without knowing details about the alethi demographics, the exact amount of losses and their provenience, and the net flux of people to the shattered plains, it is impossible to determine how sustainable the thing is in the long run. And I doubt brandon is going to give exact numbers; if he did, it would be more likely that it would make for an unsustainable demographics. By the way, speaking of unsustainable, also the harvesting of gemhearts is unsustainable in the long run. the chasmfiends already have no newborns for the last five years. can't be long before they become endangered, then critically endangered, then extint.

Actually, sadeas was the most succesful highprince. he alone took some half of the gemhearts. So it makes sense that he alone takes half the losses of the whole army. Since he also get half the gemhearst, he has the means to recruit more and make food for all. And he's probably recuiting from other princedom. I don't think there's any law against it. So, it's not like all the highprinces coult take those kind of losses. Alethkar as a whole can. As for the actual number of bridgemen dieing in a run, that's actually unclear. Yes, that quote says one third to a half. On the other hand, several scenes have runs where a few bridge crews are focused, and others are untouched.

I think it could easily be a mistake they made at the time. They only knew of two "greater" metals, and it is easy to see a pattern when yoou only have two samples. you can always trace a line between two points, even if there is no pattern to them. or, it is possible that atium gives a signature like other temporal metals, and so what they took for the signature of "greater" metals was simply the one for temporary metals.

yes, your math is probably incorrect. some factors you may have not considered: - First, in a normal bridge run, many bridges weren't focused and had no casualties at all. So I'd estimate the casualty rate for a bridge run to be lower, to no more than 20%. - Second, sometimes the alethi arrived first and the bridgemen took no casualties at all. - Third, 150 chasmfiends were killed in total, every year. That's the total count from all 10 highprinces. It also includes the ones that were so far that the alethi didn't try to go for them. Considering all that, the casualty rate is probably close to a couple hundred thousands, for all highprinces, for all the war. Still huge numbers for a preindustrial society, though. The alethi land must be heavily populated to sustain those losses.

apparently, all those n steps are what mess up the process. the more steps you make, and the more difficult it becomes. hence why they have at most three powers. kelsier instead was fullborn, and he could fill all the 32 powers at once, in 1 step. that's why he could. I'm fuzzy on the specifics of those medallions, but I remember for certain that the book mentioned that making a medallion with all the powers is simple if there is one person who can fill all those powers at once.

that's a possible answer. or maybe it does require a different type of connection. or maybe it requires investiture, which is fairly different from connection (yes, i suppose having some investiture from a shard makes you connected to it, but only very loosely)

alas, i have no knowledge of 5th edition, so i cannot really understand what those stats mean. anyway, i'm not going to use those for my 3.5 campaign (it feels wrong to me using stuff made by other people), so i don't need them. if i had to make up stats for a shardblade, i'd say it completely ignores any nonmagical armor/shield/natural bonus to CA, and at every hit the target must make a reflexes saving throw against loss of one limb. for plate, i'd suggest it gives +30 CA and +4 str; if one tries to break it, it has damage reduction 5/-, 200 hp, and once it has taken 100 damages, its CA bonus decreases by 3 for every other 10 hp of damage dealt. str bonus is reduced to +2 when it takes 100 damages, and it goes to 0 when 150 damages are taken.

maybe he made it for the same reason he made the bands: because someone may need them in the future. and since he's probably still around and in ccontact with marsh, he may even have made the coppermind just the day wax showed up.

i think most likely that harmony saw that kelsier was arriving, but it feels wrong when coupled with the fact (secret history spoiler, maybe I should have posted into that subforum) . Unless, of course, harmony had different plans for the south, but changed plans when he realized that kelsier was back and was going there. maybe marsh gave him a tip, too.

the sovereign arrived in the south a few years after the final ascension. spook ruled the northern continent for one century. with the level of powers displayed by the bands of mourning it wouldn't be completely impossible to make the north-south trip overnight with steel speed, but it would still be awfully impractical to do it on a regular base. i doubt it would have been feasible to rule the two places at once. Also, spook would have had a big spike in one eye, which the historians would have certainly mentioned.

Before kelsier arrived, the southern scadrians were going to die. In fact, apparently kelsier arrived just in time to save the last handful of survivors. That happened several years after the final ascension. So I wonder, how the heck were they in that situation? Why sazed didn't give them a new land in a temperate area? He must have known they couldn't survive there. he certainly had the power to do soemthing about it. even if he forgot when he remmade scadrial, because he was somewhat busy, nothing would have stopped him from realizing the predicament of the southerners and adding a new continent a few months later. Also realize that at the time sazed hadn't yet undergone the personality warping cuased by the shards intent, so he still was fully himself. and he wouldn't have abandoned the southerners. So, any idea of what happened there? Unless saze wanted kelsier to go there and take care of the south, but it seems far-fetched as an option

She's a nice character, and fun to read, but there is one thing preventing me from liking her too much: she's too alike my mother. Don't get me wrong, I love my mother, but she's the kind of paranoid person who will start thinking of everything going wrong and trying to make plans for it. except, in the real world those things never happen, and it's quite annoying when she insist that people go look for some obscure documents buried in a drawer somewhere and photocopy them "just in case at the office they ask" (when there is nothing written about them in the instructions) or when I'm going out and she hold me to go through a rehearsal of what to do in case of robbery, accident, or whatever. It's good to be prepared, but past a certain limit, it becomes actually more costly to prepare for everything than to just deal with an emergency in the small chance it actuallly happens. For example, it takes less time to go back home and find some obscure document the one timme they ask for it, than to spend hours looking for documents you won't need every time you need to go to an office. Basically, steris works because she's close to wax, so the unlikely does actually keep happening near her. She aslo has enough money and free time to do her preparations.

I have to say, I was deeply disappointed by rashek. after all the trouble he went through to save tthe world, I would have expected after his death he would have told kelsier about ruin and then enlisted his help to try fix things. instead, he basically went "I don't care about those buggers anymore". after seeing him half-redeemed in retrospect in hero of ages, I was expecting better from him.

possibly so, but vin's push removed all of rashek's metalminds anyway. and the fact that those metalminds were so heavily invested - maybe because he figured it would be less likely that an opponent may push them away, maybe just because tlr wanted to have large supplies - is the best explanation for why he didn't just pull those metalminds back to him.

as far as I know, it was established that burning atiium with duraluminium would let you know "the ultimate consequence of an action". Since the future is not immutable, that is probably restricted.