king of nowhere

where do youu get the idea of two stars? the roshar system has only one star. if there were two, the book would mention it somewhere. they certainly would not have the normal day-night cycle.

well, another planet of that star passing close and perturbing the orbit would be highly unlikely as far as I know. after a solar system is formed, all the planets reach some kind of gravitational balance so that they are stable for long periods; for example, pluto and neptune intersects their orbits, but they are locked into a periodic motion where neptune makes 3 revolutions in the exact time pluto makes 2, and that prevents those two from ever coming too close; if that hadn't been the case, pluto's orbit would have been messed up and it would not be where it is now. there are plenty of bodies who have similar syncronous motions to avoid interfering with each other. those who don't reach such an equilibrium are knocked out of position and either clashes against some other planet, or are ejected from the system. That happens pretty soon, a few hundred millions years, and while that happens there are asteroids and even planetoids colliding all the time, so life cannot develop until most of the space bodies has been cleared out or put into a stable orbit (you can read the hystory of our solar system on wikipedia to get an idea; in fact, wikipedia is my main source for everything I posted here. While I would not use it for scientific research, I find it is the perfect tool to get a general culture). So, the idea that the moons are knocked out by another planet in the same system goes against our understanding of planetary dinamycs. Even if it were to happen, because orbits change a bit with time, it would be a gradual, exxtremely long process. But fear not, there are a few ways around it. The first is the rogue planet, which is a planet without a star. either it formed around a star but got knocked out in the first turbulent phase of its life, or it formed form a dust cloud too small to make a star. We know little about them, because without a star to illuminate them we can only see them by chance when they pass in front of another star, but estimates give them as pretty common. At any time, one of them could wander into the solar system, and with very little forewarning, since we would not see it until the sun would start illuminating it enough. The chances of it colliding with anything are small, and the most likely targets are the gas giants anyway; the chances of a melancholia scenario would be extremely small. BUt even if such a planet do not impact with anything, its gravitational influence will disturb the delicate equilibria of the system. it could misplace a planet's orbit, and that could in turn affect other orbits... if a gas giant rogue planet were to pass relatively close to your system, it would give it a gravitational slingshot effect. as the slingshot effect would depend strongly on where exactly each body is and how it is moving compared to the rogue planet, I can totally see as a plausible scenario that the planet and the two moons are each thrown in different directions. You can see gravitational slingshot on wikipedia to get a better idea on how it works. The second scenario to make it happen is the asteroid/planetoid. Those are relatively common in the solar system (the bigger bodies in the asteroid belt, pluto, erith, others I don't know, and several others are estimated to exist). They are in a stable orbit, but just like comets are appearing every once in a while because there are a lot of them in the outer regions and sometimes one of them is displaced by small gravitational effect, so a bigger comet or a small planetoid could come in the inner region of your star. Again, the main likelyhood is that the gas giants would capture it, but it is not impossible that it would reach the inner planets. such a body would not have enough gravity to perturb your planet very much, but it could hit your main planet with enough force to knock it out of orbit. As the moons are gravitationally bound to the planet, they would follow, but there probably is some unlikely-but-possible mechanic that would cause the two moons to leave the planet. Note: to significantly alter the orbit of the planet, a very big colliding body would be needed; we're talking about several hundreds, possibly thousands kilometers of diameter. that impact would completely annihilate all life on the planet, except maybe for some of those bacteria that live deep underground on the other side of the planet. maybe. the heat of the impact would turn the planet into a ball of molten rock, the oceans would evaporate. the effect on the closer moon would be at least akin to an atomic bomb exploding in high atmosphere, everywhere at once. and plenty of debris (some several kilometers in diameter) would be fling into space, and many of them would hit the moons and deal lots of damage. If you don't want your moons to suffer that, that's probably not a good option. A softer variation of the second scenario is that the planetoid gets captured by your system gravity, but then the fourth body will alter the delicate equilibria and will cause the two previous moons to be ejected. a bit difficult to achieve if we established that one of them is very close to the planet, but it may be possible. You'd need an astrophysic making calculations to tell for sure if it can happen or not. Notice how the various scenarios are not mutually exclusive: a rogue planet passing in the outer reaches of the system could perturb the orbit of a planetoid that was there, sending it towards the inner reaches of your system, where it gets captured by the planet's gravity, disturbs the system causing the moons to move farther from the planet as it gets closer in an unstable orbit, and finally crashes on the planet once the moons are already relatively far. I have to day, however, that according to my knowledge the rogue planet gravity slingshot would be the most plausible explanation for how a moon got quickly separated from the planet. Remember, my knowledge on the subject comes from extrapolating conclusions based on what I remember from rreading wikipedia articles, so I cannot guarantee a 100% accuracy. On the plus side, most of that stuff would require incredibly complex mathematical models to be proved either way, so I doubt anyone will be able to do any debunking.

When you happen to see in your local library a copy of dangerous women for 13 euros, and while you have absolutely no interest for all the other stories in the antology, you seriously think about buying it just for brandon's one. which is a 40-pages short story. for 13 euros. at that price per page, it would be like paying words of radiance 300 euros (400 dollars for everyone else). And then, after pondering for a minute, you put the book down. But not for the price, only because you realize you don't like sanderson short stories nearly as much as you like the long ones. For his regular long books, I'd be totally willing to pay 30 cents per page. And I'm not so rich that I ccould afford to spend all that money without second thoughts. I hope peter never read this, or the price of books may suspiciously increase...

I'm wondering about the cycle of crem. crem is solid, heavier than water. what do not acccumulates on the continent goes to the bottom of the sea. on earth, similar materials go back in the cycle when plte tectonics uplift the sea floor to form mountains, but roshar is geologically inert. so where does the crem come from? how does it go in the air?

it depends. how close they are, how fast they are spinning, if they are tidally locked, their plane of rotation, and if their plane of rotation was also spinning. let's make some examples: 1) the two planets are tidally locked, and the plane of their orbit is the same as the orbit around the star: then the moon will be visible only on one side of the planet, and it will cause a solar eclypse every day, as the moon will be much greater in the sky than our own moon. on the moon that will be more dramatic, since the planet is bigger: there will be some places on the surface that are shielded from the sun for a relatively long time, possibly leading to the formation of a cold pole in the point closer to the planet (nothing too dramatic, it would still get light at morning and afternoon). no tides, except for those caused by the second moon, because the twin planets are standing still respective to each other (the planets would be slightly eliptical because of their gravitational pull, and water will be spreadd accordingly, but it won't move - it's like the tide is frozen forever into a specific place). 2) planets tidally locked, orbiting in a plane perpendicular to their orbit around the star: in that case, the planets would get light at the poles, not at the equator. But within a full year, as th planets circle around the star, both poles would be illuminated at intervals. So virtually the day-night cycle would be one day lasting a full year, at the poles, while at the equator it would always be dusk, with the sun slowly moving around the horizon. The twin planet would be seen at the horizon from the poles, and at the top from the equator, and would always be like a half moon. there would be strong seasonal temperature variations between the poles. 3) planets tidally locked, the plane of their orbit shifts: the planets are going form situation 1 to 2 passing through everything in beteen. this is too much of a mess for me to want to figure out. the exact details would depend on the exact times of all those movements. 4) like 3, but not tidally locked: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's even more of a mess. In this cases there would be tides, and very strong ones. In all of this, there would be tidal influences of the second moon - although, if that one is further away, the effect should be relatively minor.

the coppermind also states that duraluminium causes you to burn your metal "instantly", but we know the actual burn last a few seconds. When vin get drugged and she uses duraluminium-pewter, she has a moment when she feels ok, then she sees her pewter running out. when she uses duraluminium+bronze, she senses breeze pulses for a few seconds, she would feel nothing if it was "instantaneus". The point is that "instantly" in common language just mean very fast, or much faster than other related processes. I'd say the rate of disappearence of metals when burning aluminium is not canon.

I actually wondered the same question roughly one year ago, and I made some detailed calculation about the water cycle on roshar. The main consensus on water draining was that there must be a huge subterranean draining network. the main evidences of this are a) there aren't nearly enough rivers otherwise, and the water filling the chasms in the shattered plains must go somewhere. As for crem sedimentation, I exxpect the whole roshar to be a very dinamic environment. yes, sometimes a draining channel gets clogged by crem. water becomes stagnant, forming a lake. crem fills it, becoming a new plain. meanwhile, somewhere else erosion will open up new channnels. that same process also happens on earth, and every river changes its course with time unless men prevents it, but I expect on roshar the process would be faster.

50% the mass of earth with the samme density should still be enough to retain water, barely. a higher density for the moons could be postulated, but would be difficutl to justify: earth is already very dense (the denser planet in the solarr system by a fair margin) because it has a big iron nucleus. and iron is the most stable nuclide, so it is very abundant in the universe. to be significatively denser than our planet, a nucleus of lead would be required, but lead isn't so common. Anyway, 50% the size of earth should be fine. Now, for orbital stablity: this is a case of three body problem, and as such it cannot be solved analitically except for some special cases. So there would be no way to predicct orbital stability; one could only make the calculation for as far ahead in time as his computer would allow. if there was only one moon there would be no problem, they could be twin planets orbiting around their baricentrum like pluto and charon. With a third one however the whole of it becomes quite unstable. I think there are some initial conditions that would make the system stable for at least a few billions years, even if I have no idea how to calculate which one they could be, but I'm not sure. Also, since the moons are almost half the size of the planet, speaking of planet and moons orbiting around it isn't correct. it can be said thaat a moon rotates around a planet only if the moon is small enough that it has negligible influence on the planet itself. instead, there are three bodies rotating aroundd their common baricentrum in quite a complex way. Thinking about it, maybe one of those stable conditions would be having planet+moon 1 very close to each other, and moon 2 much farther and rotating around the other two bodies. that would be relatively stable - I would bet good money it could last centuries. billions of years, ccan't say. As for the rest, I don''t think there should be any problem. we don't know the size cap for a rocky planet, but it ought to have space for something at least moderately bigger than earth. twin planets would be rare but not uncommon, triplets like this would be exceptional but could exist. Given the size of the moons, the tides should be very big, and a nightmare to predict, but that's something that can be worked around. Maybe a port city is on a rise 30 meters above sea level and ships could be launched only on high tide.

The problem is the speed at which you can burn. Even with duraluminium, a vial of metals lasted a few seconds to vin. and a vial is a few grams at most. a sword is several kilos. a mistborn impaled by a sword could try to burn the sword, but even with duraluminium it would take him some 15 minutes. which is waaaay too late to avoid being stabbed. We have no idea of the rate at which alumminium dissolves your metal reserves, but it is difficult that it would be fast enough to dissolve several kilos of metal in less than a second. even if it takes only 5 seconds to burn away a sword, it would still be too late to avoid being impaled. The way I see it, aluminium would be safe because you don't "burn" the metals, you dissipate them. duraluminium with a wrong mixture would probably kill you, but aluminium do not cause you to burn the metals. you don't get the buff, you shouldn't get the illness either.

It's a bit difficult to say whether life would be possible, because we don't really know how far life can adapt. Microbial life, certainly. there are bacteria everywhere and they can thrive in the most disparate conditions. there are some in the upper atmosphere at 15-20 km of altitude, some are several kilometers below ground and use the radioactive decay of uranium to power their photosynthesis... so, bacteria can certainly live there. As for multicellular life, the only problem I see is that two weeks of day and two weeks of night would make for huge thermal excursions. Fish could certainly live in the oceans, because the water temperature wouldn't change much. As for animals outside, they must be adapted to strong temperature changes. maybe camels could thrive there. Other animals could burrow into the ground during the night and only go out during the day, or viceversa. mammals may use something like whale blubber, an outer layer of fat full of veins that can work as insulation when the blood vessels are contracted, or as heat exchanger when the vessels are dilatated. Insects have little capability to survive the cold, but they may have easily adopted a life cycle where they pupate for the night. So, yeah, life could probably be fine, as long as it is adapted to it. By the way, since it appears that you're striving for scientific accuracy, there's a detail you may have forgot: a planet needs enough gravitational pull to have an atmosphere, or the gas will just diffuse into the space over time; the lighter the gas, the more gravity is needed to keep it. That's what happened on mars, it didn't have enough gravity to keep water vapor, so its ocean were graduallly lost in space over millions of years. The moon don't have enough gravity for any kind of atmosphere (I suppose it could retain uranium hexafluoride, if it was found in nature). Anyway, in order to have liquid water, a celestial body needs a gravity that is at least half that of our earth, maybe two thirds. So those satellites need to be very big, or very dense.

I don't know if enough of chouta is described to make it, but good luck trying. The closes earth-equivalent to herdazians are spanish or perhaps mexicans.

I'm pretty sure that sanderson said you could burn your own hemalurgic spikes, but it would be so painful you'd pass out immediately. As for the rest, aluminium burning itself has already been covered by many, and it debunks that theory. Not being sure if an aluminium gnat can get rid of other metals is also possibly one, although we have no confirmation either way. We don't know if aluminium would act fast enough to vaporize a sword striking through your chest - it oes appear to be instantaneous, but one thing is burning a few flakes of finely divided metal, another is burning a whole sword. But there's another wrong thing in the op, although it is not relevant to the theory It doesn't work like that. burning aluminium don't protect you from mental allomancy. instead, wearing an aluminium foil around your head protects you from mental allomancy. And I suppose covering another metal with aluminium foil would prevent it from being sensed allomantically, although there is no direct evidence of this.

I took that knowledge as something coming with stormform. you know, odium whispering in their minds, that sort of things. I doubt they already tried stormform before. Not only would have it been difficult to pull out without being noticed, but even if they had, they'd have no way of knowing the everstorm would blow eastward unless they already sumoned one - which they clearly didn't.

since realmathics draws deeply into greek philosophy, I would keep the paralllel and think the cognitive identity of stuff is made of aristothelian substance and accidents. a table sees itself as a table (the substance) and then it has various "accidents" that are other qualities it has but are not stictly relatd to being a table (being brown, being wooden, having a scratch...). color would be an accident, and possibly modifiable without altering the rest of the cognitive identity. possibly that's what lightweaving does. How all this interact with the physical realm is a big mess. Although I'd wager that if you soulcast/lightweave/whatever an object to change its color, the change would be investiture-fueled, and not reflected in changes to the molecular level. but then, drained objects... maybe they lose some part of innate investiture? the change there is certainly permament, while an investiturre-fueled change is normally temporary.

In my experience, that's no different from any other fantasy-related search. remove fantasy/supernatural, and it is no different from any other search. I blame marketing strategies. Sometimes I think I'd buy a book with a blank cover simply for how refreshing it would be that no one is trying to trick me into buying it.

I'm so confused. I always assumed "saga" was more or less a synonim of "series", and as such usable to describe any collection of books with an overarching plot, such as mistborn, the wheel of time,the stormlight archive, or anything else. is it not so? what's wrong with alling mistborn a saga?

two books are a bit early to draw parallels of that sort...

If we consider the colors as additive, than black is lack of color and white is sum of all colors. If we see from the point of view of the material absorptivity and reflectivity, then white is lack of color (no absorption, all reflected) and black is all colors (all absorbed). But I'd suppose for the purpose of awakening the cognitive principle would matter. so black sees itself as a color and white does not.

When you read in an unrelated book someone described as "darkeyed" and immediately think he must be of low ranking. And then you stop reading and go posting it there to share the experience.

Szeth is back, and he's not happy

Are you aware of the existance of the cosmere as a whole, the shards of adonalsium, hoid, and the 17th shard? If not, then you should start looking around. it's basically a huge easter egg ecnompassing all his books. Also, if you are looking for informations, you can visit coppermind.net

i think it has been confirmed somewhere that lerasium has another effect and turning you into a mistborn is merely an accident. no one has any idea what that effect would be

Sanderson intends for all his books to be readable without reading previous books (unless they are prequels, of course). So, no cosmere references are needed to ready any one book (and if they are, they are introduced in the same saga), and no book spoilers any other book, even if they are connected. For example, there is one character in words of radiance who is a worldhopper native from nalthis (the world of warbreaker), but there is no real way, when you read warbreaker, to recogize him. And there is a character in the way of kings who appeared in mistborn, but he's a minor ccharacter and the only thing matching is the physical description and the only conclusion you can draw from it is that the character survives and becomes a worldhopper - which is hardly a spoiler, the guy is not important enough for his survival to count as one. So, feel free to read all sanderson books in any order. On the other hand, on the forum you'll find plenty of spoilers, and many of them are just tossed around casually cause they are assumed common knowledge. So, even if this is technically the sa subforum, most people writing here will just casually refer to events in the end of the mistborn trilogy without really thinking that there may be some new guy who hasn't read it yet. So, be very careful about it. If I were you I'd stay away from the forum until the end of mistborn 3. The other books are also spoilered, the most cosmere intensive are mistborn and sa, finding spoilers from other books used casually is rare.

yeah, but the everstorm is not a treath to radiants, merely to the population they protect. it is entirely possible that the current radiants are too few and all of humankind will be slaughtered while they are powerless to stop the huge numbers of voidbringers... but seeing a radiant mop the floor with countless enemies while even more enemies just go ahead and kill the people he was trying to protect don't really seem the most epic of storiesto me. So, I'd bet goood money that the voidbringers will have boss troops. we already know of thunderclasts, and I'd say there will be more forthe sake of variety

alll the narrative gives the vague impression gthat highstorms happen roughly once per week on average. the only thing that counters that are a few random statemments from characters that weren't striving for accuracy at the time. It is also possible that brandon missed a bit of mathematics there. Still, once per week on average should be the closer we can get to an accurate count.