king of nowhere

Well, my main beef with anthologies is that they are short stories. Ever since I picked up the wheel of time, I require a long and articulated complex supported by deep worldbuilding to be enticed by something. Every book shorter than 300 pages just don't have enough plot to really take me (including the emperor's soul; I appreciated it, but it's the only sanderson book I have read only once. Same goes for new spring), and I also stopped watching movies. Also, if I am told to "try" something, I unconsciously go into super-critic mode and will see all the worst of it. I still remember a time my brother told me to listen to a song I could like, and I was "meh, nice but nothing special"; then I heard the same song at a party a few months later, and I instantly loved it. even now, 13 years later, it's one of my favourites. And an anthology of short stories is an invitation to try out new authors. So, it does not matter how good those stories are. I am never, ever going to like them, for reasons stemming from my personal tastes and my screwed up psycology.. My main reason for wanting to read a river of souls is that it is supposed to contain informations on shara, and I am very curious about it. because there is so little in the regular books. I'm the kind of guy who, upon seeing a map, starts wondering what's in the empty spaces. So, even if it was just an info dump on sharan customs, I'd still want to read it. Thanks for the answers. I'll probably buy the ebook sooner or later.

only one of the faces has a mistborn symbols. if all faces had had symbols, I could have given it a tought. Stilll highly unlikely to have them shipped across the oocean, though, so don't go adding that option just for me.

That I'm not sure of. However, our planet's crust is like 40% silica, and we have plenty of organisms that live in harsh wheather, and none of them is using silica for heat protection (I think some crustaceans or something use silica on their shells, but not sure; and silicon is used in some minor biological process, but we don't know how; we just know that if we take away all silicon from an animal's food it will become ill). I'd think if there was a particular benefit to useing silica something would have adapted to do it. In general, heat protection is achieved in two ways: the first is insulation. so you'd want something with low thermal conductance. fat, wood, hair, feathers, all that kind of stuff. the second is active cooling: since nature don't have refriigerators, it uses water evaporation to get rid of heat, like sweating. that requires lots of water, and desert creatures cannot use it and are reduced to adapting to surviving a higher body temperature, but if there was that kind of day/night cycle I'd guess rain would be abundant: when on the two-week day it becomes very hot plenty of water evaporates from the ocean, and when it cools again it will all fall as rain or snow. So plants there should have access to plenty of water to keeep cool by transpiration. They also would probably be pine-like, with needles for leaves, because they would have to resist extreme temperature differences, and I doubt they can afford to shed leaves and grow them back every forthnight. but who knows, maybe evolution could provide a leave that can go from 50 to -20 degress in a few days without dieing if there was a need for it.

well, the title pretty much says it all. I know it was publiched as part of an anthology, but I'm not going to buy all the anthology just for it. do anyone know of some other way to read it? can i get it separately from the anthology in some kind of ebook format? (note that i have no ebook reader or tablet or ipad or aything, just dear old laptop, and i like it that way)

Mercury is a liquid and it dissolves aluminium in a way similat to how water dissolves sugar. However, the more aluminium is dissolved in the mercury, the higher the melting temperature of the resulting amalgam, until at some aluminium concentration (no idea how much) it won't be liquid anymore at room temperature. as long as you stay below that, the mercury/aluminium amalgam will stay liquid forever, unless you freeze it. and if it is encapsulated in airproof iron, it will last for years at least without corrosion from air. However, aluminium is very reactive, and the only reason it do not burn in contacct with air is that it froms a thin layer of aluminium oxide on the surface that protects it from further oxidation. but mercury interferes with the formation of that film, so once exposed to water or air the aluminium will oxidize very fast, no more than a few minutes. And after it oxidizes, it won't prevent feruchemical healing anymore. So, it would be better to shoot several bullets with intervals of a few minutes, to always keep enough alumminium in the blood of the victim. ultimately, the chance to killl tlr with that bullet relies on a lot of ifs. if the mercury/aluminium amalgam can still block allomancy. if it cannot be burned allomantically. if the fraction of gram of aluminium you can inoculate that way is enough to stop feruchemical healing completely. if the aluminium does not oxidize in a matter of a few seconds. but it would be really nice if it worked.

I have no idea what the movie is (except that from the title I ccan figure out it relates to vampires) but i'd say it would be possible. but impractical. first of all, the core need to be liquid at room temperature. that means aluminium needs to be in ionic form, which would make it allomantically inert. an option could be a mercury/alluminium amalgam (I can't find if it is liquid at room temperature or not) but if your purpose is to capture the target alive, injecting several grams of mercury in him is not the way to go, and if your purpose is to kill him in a fight, that kind of poisoning will take seveeral minutes to come in effect, you're generally better off just using a normal bullet. a bullet with a liquid core, in fact, would have a lower penetration capability because it would deform on impact. a deadly, immediately incapacitating wound from it would become a light wound, deadly only after poioning takes effect. It could, on the other hand, be one of the few convenient ways to kill the lord ruler. a bullet that is aluminium outside (so he can't push on it) then iron (which is not corroded by mercury) then mercury/aluminium amalgam could carry on enough aluminium to stop his powers, and enough mercury to kil him for that. It depends strictly on how much aluminium in the blood one can have before it interferes with allomancy, and how much aluminium you can dissolve in mercury before it becomes solid, and whether such an amalgam would still have the allomantic properties of aluminium or not. Oh, and by the way, mercury facilitates corrosion of aluminium, which would oxidize it to +3, which would negage its allomancy. so the power negation would work at most for a few minutes. You'd need several shots to succeed.

that I don't think would work 1) tidaly locked moon: the night of two days would not be enough to freeze the planet. our own polar regions are in the dark for six months, but atmospheric circulation still brings enough hot air there. Temperature should remain in the +50/-20 region. 2) living creatures with high melting point: the problem is not in the metling point of silica, the problem is that life need to be based on organic molecules, and organic molecules are too complex to be thermally stable. DNA itself at 90 degrees starts breaking down in a multitude of ways - the phosphate backbone get hydrolized, the N-glycosidic bond gets broken, the bases all have some kind of breakdown. life can exist in thermal vents in the deep ocean at well above 100 degrees, but not much more. So, there would be no direct advantage from having silica in plants. thermal reesistance up to 100 degrees iss achieved by optimizing proteins to work at that temperature, selecting all biological molecules for thermal stability, selecting a DNA poor of A-T pairs (which are the more labile) and expressing a lot of repairing proteins to continually fix up all the damage done by the temperature. Thermal resistance much above that point cannot be achieved, certainly not with refractary materials.

copper wouldn't be that useful today with electronic agendas (still good cause it won't run out of battery, meh). and also won't get you past university, unless you're in a faculty where you need to memorize everything. but in science many professors let you keep the books with you, cause your skill is not in remembering that stuff (what would be the point of writing it down anyway?) but in being able to apply it to solve the problem at hand. it is, on the other hand, useful to forget stuff. you can store all the spoilers in a book. you could forget a traumatic experience. For dating, I feel using brass or zinc on an unknowing partner is a form of rape (now, if the partner was asking you to be soothed, that would be great. the possibilities to reciprocally soothe/riot with your sexual partner is an advantage of allomancy that feruchemy can't get). On the other hand, feruchemy is all internal, the change is all in me, so using that would be absolutely ok. anyway, all things considered, I'd take feruchemy. allomancy can get you some "that's awesome" moments, but it don't compare with sheer usefulness for everyday life.

Seems more of a queestionnaire for guilt feelings and social interactions to me. The simple solution is simply to stop feeling guilty about it and cut down on sanderson's references with people who don't appreciate them. then you will at most be at 1/4

Good point, I have no other evidence, really. I myself did believe aluminium blocks coinshots and lurchers until I started writing that post, and then I wondered about it some more because of the bullets... but my proof is not solely on the vanisher's bullets. if aluminium coated bullets were viable, then more people would have them. a minor plot point is that ranette did not make vindication in aluminium because she was not rich enough. but she certainly is not poor, and if a thin coating of aluminium was enough, then she'd definitely could do it. wax does not have aluminium bullets, and if aluminium coated bullets worked, they should be available for sale. After all, it would take only a fraction of gram of aluminium to make such a bullet, totally affordable. So, if aluminium-coated bullets worked, it is at least strange that they were never mentioned. @ Lotd Tavash Shar: well, your data supports my idea. 100 micrograms per liter are less than one milligram in your whole blood, and that's way too little to make a coating around you. But now that I think about it, the whole point is probably moot, because aluminium in blood is ionic, and as far as we know metal need to be in metallic forms to work for allomancers. we never saw anyone pushing on concrete, despite it containing plenty of iron silicate. we never see anyone pushing on marble, which is calcium carbonate. So, aluminium dissolved in the blood would have no allomantic properties. And as for injeting in the blood metallic aluminium dust... well, let's just say that the blood does not react well with solid particles in it. You'd definitely kill the allomancers. Anyway, get an upvote ffor finding the data. As a scientist, I always appreciate someone who can provide hard facts to a discussion.

I'm sure the chances for lucrous trade would not be limited by gemstones. but anyway, I'm sure with their magical knowledge they could find a way to make money anyway. and in a pinch, they could just rob something: havving powers no one in the world knows of is a huge advantage. basically, to a worldhopper money is purely a matter of time.

I have the impression that the shamans ddo not know anything about what happens to szeth, but they will have a way to just return the blade to them. like, say, a second binding. So that the shamans are bonded to the blade, but they can allow szeth to also bond it, but when szeth dies the bond reverts back to the shamans immediately. That's my opinion.

Aluminium is weird, and maybe not totally consistent. On one side, it seems aluminium blocks allomantic pulses. if you weear aluminum around your head, you cannot be soothed. you don't have to have a brain made of aluminium. on the other, aluminium do not stop a coinshot from pushing metals behind it. if it did, then you wouldn't need a whole aluminium bullet - you could just make regular bullets with a light aluminium coating, and they would be much cheaper and more effective (aluminium has lower mass, thus lower penetration power). So, would wrapping an allomancer in tinfoil stop him from using allomancy? yes? no? only some specific powers? We don't have evidence on that. Or, rather, we have contradicting evidence. But of something I amm relatively sure (by that I mean, if it was the real world I would bet huge money on it, but sanderson may as well allow it for rule of cool, so I cannot say for sure): if wrapping an allomancer in tinfoil stops his powers, and if putting aluminium in the blood of an allomancer counts as wrapping him in tinfoil, then the level of aluminium needed to stop or dampen his power significnatly would kill him by aluminium poisoning. You take a relatively high amount to block allomancy with a foil, and the blood is very sensitive to metal contaminations. On the other hand, something similar could work: a bomb loaded with aluminium dust and glue, would spray aluminium dust that would stick to the skin of allomancers (or anyone else), blocking them but probably avoiding much posioning because the metal stays outside the body. However, such a bomb is not very practical to deploy or use. I can see it used in a hostage situation where coinshots are threatening to kill them and have no guns. that's pretty much the only situation I can think of where it would not be just more convenient to load the bomb with explosive and just blow those allomancers to bits. I don't think that is the case. in the final shootdown of aol, all the villains are using aluminium bullets. and one of them hit vayne, who heal from it. Now, if the wound was coated in aluminium, that maybe wouuld have an effect. maybe. EDIT: Now that I think about it, I wonder if alumiinium is completely inert, or if it is like a coppercloud, that you can overcome it by just pushing harder.

I think he gave the deal to the first nine kings while he was still with the power of the well. they accepted, so he made them noble and gave each a bead of lerasium. it seems all nobles aare descendant of those nine people.

I don't think scadrial and threnody are in the same system. I think systems with two planets capable of supporting multicellular life would be extremely rare. bacteria can live almost everywhere, but to have forests and lakes and such you need specific climatic constraints. the fact that they see the same patch of bright stars on their sky only means they are close, in astronomical terms. if the stars appear bright to the naked eye, we can suppose they are within 50 light years of scadrial. and also within 50 light years of threnody. that ccould easily result from the two planets being 100 light years aside, on the opposite side of the patch. As other people have said, your plan is ambitious, but I don't think we will ever have enough informations for it. especially concerning thridimensional distribution.

I am trying to get my friends to read alcatraz so that, if they ever try to be dismissive about fantasy literature, I can answer "yeah, go on reading about dead dogs if you prefer"

All your reserves on the statistical accuracy of just making 1/50 * 1/50 are true. unfortunately, we have no way whatsoever of estimating all those other factors. So, 1 in 2500 is the best guess we can do with the informations at hand, keeping in mind that it is not an exact valued. approximated knowledge is better than no knowledge at all. I have to say, that number is higher than I assumed. I figured mistings themselves were super rare, but with 1/50 it seems the average joe will know a half dozen of them. with 1 person out of 25 having magical abilities, there's one in every class at school. they must be integral part of scadrial's life, not just a rarity mostpeoplewill never see. Actually, that number seemed right to me. luthadel had a skaa population of one million if i remember correctly, and that would make one hundred mistings among them. if you consider that "several" of club's apprentices were actually smokers, it means that he employied one third of the skaa smokers in the city. and kelsier mentions another smoker before clubs, who was unfortunately killed by the inquisitors months before. Also breeze had other soothers at his service. And consider that a lot of skaa mistings are killed by the inquisition, or as an aftermath of a robbery ended poorly, than it means that kelsier had most of the misting poulation of luthadel in his team. I think the "1 in 10000 skaa are born allomancers" worked pretty well. less than that, and the crew would become irrealistic.

I thnk sahllan's memory was already established as an effect of the nahel bond. as for the rest, it is fully possible that having magical abilities also make you good at something else.

If I get the spren, it would still be a good deal. even without stormlight, pattern can pick locks and solve mathematic problems, syl can find objeccts around... not to mention that I'd like to interact with them anyway. so, too useful for this thread.

the way it is written make it really look like the work of a bot. also the cover has nothing to do with the content. I'd assume that the physiical book itself does not exist. not that it would stop people from getting their money suckered if they make the purchase.

it is possible, but anyway it wouldn't be immunity. a coppercloud can be pierced with enough power. vin could still feel the lord ruler's soothing despite burning copper. And the magic of roshar involves huge amounts of investiture. so I'd wager that a radiant can pierce the effect of copper pretty easily.

wouldn't that be for gold ferring?

I suppose it is fully possible. the only blank point we miss is how he could distinguish jasnah soulcasting under her own power or with the soulcaster. as far as we know, he has no way of ascertaining if works or not, but there are many things we don't know. On the other hand, from a storytelling point of view, that scene served to introduce the readers to soulcasting, so it may as well be a coincidence that serves a narrative purpose.

maybe during the holidays you were supposed to pray to the lord ruler by working extra hard. after all, that's the kind of devotion he required...

I have no real idea on how I feel about cartoons cause I haven''t seen one in twenty years. anyway, it's not really dislike, it's just that i have troubles associating it with something serious. for a parody i would have no problems with it.