king of nowhere

yes, from vin experimenting aluminium alloys and sazed storing attributes into random stuff, we can assume that probably metals work allomantically/feruchemically/hemalurgically with a tolerance for impurities of at least 5%, possibly greater. As for the earrings, it is possible that once you stick a spike into a body, the spike stops leaking even if you then take it out.

well, considering that any epic had the "right" to kill any non-epic with impuity, I'd say that censorship wasn't needed, a scriptwriter had better not joke at epics if he cared for his life. As for entertainment, not sure. he had a branch of burocracy devoted to making sure he'd be feared, but i have no idea if they were also producing soap operas.

it is mentioned a few times kelsier and vin balancing on top of a coin by pushing on it until their push is too weak to propel them further up. that strongly implies that pushes get weaker with distance. I'm pretty sure it is mentioned directly somewhere too, but can offer no proof of it

do we know that those coins were made of gold? allomancers used the smaller denominations of coins, so it would seem unlikely that it was a gold one; while in a later scene kelsier files some gold from a coin to have vin experiment it, i doubt those smaller coins used for throwing are gold. copper and nickel are more likely. and tidal forces can only justify a few kilograms of force, which should not be able to bbend a coin, unless they were really thin. so it must mean that the force is not uniformely applied to all the metal. actually, that makes much more sense if we imagine the allomantic pushes as two thumbs pressing on the coin from opposite directions, flattening it. So, from those facts it appears that allomancy do not act like gravity or electromagnetism, but rather like an invisible hand pushing and pulling. being connected to the ccognitive and spiritual realms rather than the mere laws of physics, it makes kinda sense. Now, back about equilibrium, and disregarding horizontal one: yesterday I didn't look at the formula in detail because it was 3 am and I wanted to go sleep, but now I did and I see your point. There is, indeed, a stable equilibriium point, where the upward push of both allomancers has become so weak with distance that it is just enough to support the coin. go upward, the coin falls down. go down, the coin is pushed up. That's the point at 1.25 in the x axis (i don't suppose the scale is significant). However, we have established that the horizontal push was of the order of hundreds of kg. so, in order to reach a point where the allomantic pushes were weakened by distance, the coin must have been WAY up in the air. we're talking a few tens of meters, maybe even one hundred*. So the coin would not be "between" them in any way that could fit the description of the scene. There is also a second point of equilibrium closer to the horizontal line, the one at x=0.4 in your graph, but that's unstable. if the coin goes up, the upwaard forces increases and it gets pushed eventually to the stable equilibrium. if it goes down, the downward forces increase, until it falls to the ground. I was mislead by said factor of being 3 am into thinking that there was a small stable area around that point, but no, it doesn't, as your graph itself proves. So, basically, your graph is perfectlyy correct in expplaining the upward force, but it has a wrong scale. since the horizontal force acting on the coin is much greater thn the coin itself, the area with a net upward force would become much greater. an up-to-scale graph would have the first equilibrium point, the unstable one, at x=10-4 m (or so, depennding on accuracy of assumptions), while the stable equilibrium would be at x=100 m or something. *actually, if an allomancer can push a coin with dozens of kilograms from a few meters, but cannot push a coin at 100 meters, it means that the decrease is not simply quadratic. it is much more chaotic than that. I think a quadratic drop could be a good base for the force of the push, but in addition one must also use another factor that takes into account the ease of sensing the metal. The farrther a metal is, the less you can sense it, and that decrease your push, in addition to the effect of the distance. sensing is also affected by the medium between you adn the metal, and by the sie of the metal, and many other factors, so it would be pretty difficult to calculate. In addition, I don't think the force is quadratic with distance either. there is no proof whatsoever that by pushing yourself against a heavy anchor that is one meter away you can get four times the force you can get at 2 meters, and everything would lead to believe otherwise. In fact, thinking about it, it seems as long as objects are reasonably close, allomancers can push on them at full strenght, with barely any reduction in going from 1 centimeter to 5 meters. But then it drops pretty quickly. So I think now an inverse quadratic dependence on distance is not a realistic model for allomancy. Probably an exponential decay of some sort would work better to describe how allomantic push diminishes with distance. (underlined it cause long post with technical stuff that many people may skip, so that way they would notice the conclusion anyway).

Good point stormwalker. I like people responding to accurate mathematical models with even more accurate mathematical models. My nerd scientist side revels in this. Now, the first objection I was going to make was the unstable equilibrium on the horizontal axis, but you already edited this yourself. I will also point out that, while I do believe that allomantic pushes are inversely proportional to the distance or to its square (allomancers can affect with less strenght objects that are farther away) the pushes of kelsier and vin were capable of deforming the coin. I don't know what kind of stress it would take for that, and I cannot calculate it without knowing the angles and torque moments involved and lots of other stuff, and I'm not familiar with that branch of physics anyway, But I can say for sure that it has to be thousands of times greater than the wheight of the coin. That means that, for the coin not to be pushed upwards, the sinus of the angle of incidence of the push compared to the horizontal must have been lower than 1/1000. That fixes that angle at less than 1/20th of degree. At ten meters away, that translates in a vertical shift of around one centimeter. I didn't take into account the different force of the push with vvarying distance in my original calculation because I assumed the variation in distance was negligible. Well, turns out by taking it into account there is a small island of stability, but it is extremely small, and only on the y axis. Furthermore, my calculation is probably conservative here. A coin cannot wheight more than a few grams, but the push transferred from kelsier to the coin to vin was enough to shove vin backwards, up against a small tree, and then crack the tree trunk. So, the force of the push was more likely at least several tens of kilograms, which would reduce the stability area to a fraction of a millimeter. While I also always assumed that allomancy carried no attrition because forces normally don't, I think there are lots of instances proving that allomantic attrition does exist. not only that single coin episode. there are many times a character can balance with an allomantic push over a single coin. Not a tripod, a single one. think about it: you're up in the air supported by something with an area less than a square centimeter; it's like walking on stilts twenty meters long and with narrow end, pretty difficult by itself. but if there is no attrition, then there is nothing to prevent you from sliding across the surface of the coin. it's still like having stilts, but no the bottom of the stilt is also extremely well greased. difficult to believe if the coin do not also offer some support against lateral forces, which can only be justified by attrition. And I can't remember the specifics, but I'm pretty sure that there are other scenes with characters pushing and a single coin trapped between them. even the proponents of the "it is possible" theory admit it's extremley unlikely; can it happen several times? Doubtful. So, I think allomantic pushes are better explained by assuing pushing against an object also causes some friction on it. Not much, or there would be many more coins trapped between pushes. I'd say somewhere around a friction coefficient of 1/100, although this is just a guess.

I tried to write the worst inclusion fanfiction I could imagine Vasher stared at the alien world, with its bare rock and strange crustacean life, cradling nightblood in his arms. "Here you are safe. the people from Nalthis cannot reach you any longer, to use you for nefarious purposes. Sure, now you are a danger to this planet instead. But let's face it: here they have so many problems, one more or less won't change a damnation." Will I get to destroy some evil? "Sure. In fact, your job will be much easier. I prepared you a list. Kaladin stormblessed, and everyone who's under his protection. The kholin family, and everyone directly tied to them. Those are not evil. Everyone else is fair game." A new person arrived. "A blind man stood at the end of time, contemplating beauty" "I'm sure I've already seen you somewhere" "Yes, I'm always around for important events, doing some vague and unspecified thing that is hinted to be very important." "And what important thing are going to happen- A man appeared. He didn't arrive, he appeared. One moment he wasn't there, one moment he was. And his face was familiar "Denth? I'm sure I killed you!" "Fun fact: by stabbing me in the heart with your steel knife, you stole my soul into the knife. by appropriate knowledge, it could be restored. Some bizarre science called heamlurgy. Now I also learned to worldhop. Prepare to die." "Not so fast! You won't have him while I live" "Siri? What are you doing here? And how do you think to fight without an army? I see tonk fah, jewel and arsteel arrived too" "Well, I'm merely accompanying my husband" "Oh, susebron too? Is there someone else from the Nalthis who did not learn to worldhop?" "As a matter of fact, no" said Mab the cook. "You guys are all kayana. Sule?" Said a dark skinned one. Vasher didn't recognize him. There was a moment of surreal silence, suddenly broken by the sound of someone falling into a brush. Turned out to be a midget with some strange glasses. "I'm afraid I lost myself pretty badly this time" Alternative ending: the world flickered, and on a stone formation curiously resembling seven steps there was suddenly a diminutive woman. She wore a strange jewel, a blue stone suspended in the middle of her forehead by a chain. "Huh, sorry I think I got the wrong universe here. May the light preserve you from poorly written fancfiction" A new flicker, and she disappeared.

As far as i remember, his emotions were quite normal. There was a solemnity to the scene. Some people are just more reserved than others, and david is quite reserved. he shows emotion by the devotion he has for his mission. Plus, he had steelheart to remember him of his father every single day. That should take away some impact.

No, the coin scenario is not possible without friction for any meaningful amount of time, because if it was suspended only by a slightly upward push, the coin would be in a pposition of unstable equilibrium. I'm talking about the physical meaning of it. Its derivative is zero, but it is a local maximum. As soon as the coin moves a tenth of millimeter under its position, the upward push would diminish (as can be easily seen by trigonometry; it would change the angle of incidence of the push), and the coin would fall down. if it moves upward, the upward push would increase, pushing it more up until it flies away. if it moves laterally, it gets thrown laterally. First and weakest argument, the likelyhood of something like this happening with such a precision is of the order of one in billions of billions. Let's do some math. kelsier can push enough to lift himself and another person, so let's assume he can push 200 kg. a coin only wheight a few grams, let's make it 4 for the sake of simplicity. so kelsier's push would need to only convey 2 grams of upward push (the other 2 are given by vin's push, in the simple case this is simmetric). that's 1/10000 of the total push. that requires that the sinus of the angle between kelsier and the coin is approximately one thousandth of degree. if kelsier is 10 meters away from the coin, that would mean that the coin is lifted by exactly 0.1 millimeters compared to the perfectly horizontal line. if the coin was lifted by 0.2 mm, it would shot upwards with a starting acceleration of 1 g. even 0.01 mm would start giving it an acceleration of 0.1 g. But as it goes higher, the upward force increases, and the coins sped up. once it moves 0.09 mm, it already accelerates at 1 g. And to move 0.1 mm by accelerating at 1 g starting from standing still, you need roughly 1/20 of second. that's not taking into account that the acceleration would be growing progressively. So, if we want the coin to hover in the air for a few seconds, we need it to be placed within a few hundred nanometers from the point of equilibrium. that's a thousand atomic radii. and the slightest gust of wind - what I say, just the very brownian motion even if the air was perfectly still - would push it out of place. But, even more convincing: the coin was moving, then it stopped in midair. so there must have been a force acting on it to place it there, a force that put the coin back in place if it get moved by small amounts. that force do not exist: we demonstrated before that if the coin underwent the slightest movement, it would exit the equilibrium. so, while it would theoretically possible for the coin to remain there if it was placed with extreme accuracy, it is impossible that it got caught there. Well, unless it also was thrown against the force pushing the coin out of there, with exactly enough kinetic energy to reach the unstable equilibrium and stop there. that's the equivalent of launching a ball with exactly enough speed to climb a slope and stopping on top of it without falling on the other side. with the top of the slope being less than one micrometer wide. So, no, that's not going to happen. I always arbitrarily assumed that allomantic pushes had no friction, but the coin episode indeed proves it does. That's it.

I haven't read the whole thread, but i doubt someone had my idea before. With my power, I am probably the only thing that can kill the super lord ruler with all powers mentioned a few pages ago. And to do so, I'd simply need the powers to soulcast and elsecall. We have seen in the excerpt published a few weeks ago that you can soulcast things in the physical realm while staying in shadesmar. So I simply need to move to shadesmar. Go where my enemies are. And soulcast a critical mass of plutonium. I have the power to make a nuke wherever I want. I wonder how that power will affect roshar once the possibility will be known. Too bad they are still waaay behind for nuclear physics.

there are several such lists around the internet. However, the lord ruler was being influenced by ruin to act that way, so it makes kinda sense.

also, if it was simply a center of religious significance, hoid would not be concerned too much. if it is not a metaphor, it must be something upon which the very creation depends. However, I'll go for the metaphor.

That seems to directly contradict the coppermind, which has a direct reference from word of brandon saying that khriss knows more than hoid. probably he got confused there a moment. all those names can be coonfusing to keep straight.

I think you're all to hard to egwene. Sure, she's arrogant, mean, spoiled, everything else, and I certainly would never want to meet her in person (how can gawyn stand her anyway?). But she's also a good person and a force of good. She cares about the well being of the people she uses as pawns much more than the average aes sedai. I don't think she could have been a villain in another story, except accidentally by being led to believe that the good guys are wrong and being too dismissive to listen to alternative explanations; sort of like miko in the order of the stick.

I see a fairly big flaw in this argument too. Taking part in a battle do not make one dedicated to battle; being forced to fight because there's the desolation do not mean one is dedicated to fight. It's like sazed in mistborn: he was a scholar, not a warrior, and the fact that he was stuck in battle all the time and that he got pretty good at it do not change the fact. He wanted to be a scholar. that was his orientation. Also, everyone, I believe you are looking too much into the radiant's personality traits. You seem to assume that two radiants of the same order will be virtuallly indistinguishable from each other. While personality plays a big part in a spren's reason to bond a human, those traits are far from defining. A loving/caring person could easily be the fiercest warrior: think of a mother whose children are in danger. A resolute/decisive could easily be a scientist, relentlessly pursuing his interest. or even a guy working in an assembly line, who just shows those trait outside of his work. I'd be very careful in saying that members of a certain order would behavve in a certain way. Especially considering this is Sanderson's work; he mentioned somewhere that he don't like to make socieal groups look too uniform, and so he ofter take someone who don't fit the mold as a representative. for example ham is a warrior philosopher when most thugs are said to be brutes, galladon is dark and pessimistic when dula are said to be happy. I don't think he'd write ten orders of magical knights whose members all have basically the same personality.

brandon mentioned somewhere that the notes from robert jordan said that moiraine was necessary to unite mankind for the last battle, and withoout her the alliance at the field of merrilor would have not formed an alliance. After all the character development egwene got in the tower, it was very difficult to make her act in a way that would spoil the treaty without breaking character. The scene feels underwhelming because of that.

I doubt it would have the power of a cannonball. we know that a good line of warding can stop a cannonball, but for the offensive factor the only thing that matters is the pushing force of the line of vigor. and i doubt it would be more than a punch.

Well, I'm planning to do a thread for that too, but I'd wait for at least another book to come out, so we have more material. BY the way, I am humbled that after two years my silly thread is still up and going.

The thing about hemalurgy in the final empire is that it was too difficult to do more than just spiking at random to see what worked, and too exxpensive to justify most uses. it was said somewhere that tlr experimented for all his reign but never found anything useful. kandra, inquisitors and koloss all were conceived while he held the power of the well.

Sorry you misunderstood my attitude, it happens on the internet when we don't have body language or intonation. Condescending was not my intention. My actual attitude is half amused and half teasing. I'm not "ah, you're not gonna finish it", I'm more, "aww, I sooo would like to tell you the next awesome stuff that happens". I feel anticipations for the stuff that you will read; it's pretty crazy. It's like I was reading it, with the added bonus of knowing what happens, but since you don't know what happens I get excited about it. Yes, it don't make much sense. I'm laughing at my own sillyness right now. But still can't help feeling excited at the idea of you finally getting the payoff for soome of the stuff that you don't appreciate right now. So, I hope that clarifies a bit. Or maybe it's even more confusing. By the way, I read wot three times, the first was around 2004, and i'm planning to start a fourth any week now.

I don't have my chemistry books here (albeit, if i will remember, I can maybe look in the university library tomorrow) and the wiki articles all have books as references, but I checked the pages in italian, french and spanish and they all agree that it was made in 1797 by Vauguelin, and they are all much older. The french one hasn't been modified since april. The page on Vauguelin further confirms that he isolated chromium in 1797. The italian, french and spanish pages also explain how he did it: he took natually occurring mineral crocoite, which is lead chromate, and treated it with hydrochloric acid, obtaining chromium trioxide. He then got the pure metal by heating the oxide over a bed of coal. As I specialized in organic chemistry this is not strictly my field, but it's a pretty reasonable way to get it, and I would definitely guess that it would work. There is a slight discrepancy on the dates, as they saidd that he isolated the metal in 1797, but then they explain that he isolated the oxide in 1797 and got the metal the next year, but anyway, close enough. The page on chromium oxide further says that it is industrially formed by treating chromate with an acid, even if the industry uses sodium chromate and sulphuric acid, but the reaction is the same. So, that should clear all doubts on which is the correct version. And the chromate+acid+coal reaction wouldn't even be that expensive to perform. That's the most significant mistake I ever found on wiki so far. EDIT: I checked the chronology of the english article as well, and as far back as june they all agreed with the current version.

What does a 17th sharder and a seamstress have in common? Both get excited over a glorified pincushion.

kelsier is not just god, he's more important than that. he's so important that god was his butler

Who knows, maybe they'll do a civil marriage "So, Adolin, put your gliph signature here... Shallan, put yours there... ok, now you are married. Next one!"

well, feeling daunted about reading the wheel of time is like being intimidated by an immense cake because you'll take a long time to finish it. assume for the sake of the example that the cake never spoils no matter how many weeks it takes you to eat it all. I would soo not complain. I have to agree that the forsaken chappters were quite annoying in that you never undestood what was going on - unless you were one of the diehard fans keeping diagrams and notes to figure out all the hints. I think jordan overstimated what "was obvious" and how many side.subplots readers could really remember. Cadsuane... well, she's awesome and she's annoying. Both to an incredible degree. I never sorted my feelings about her. As for morgase and the children of the light, well, sometimes it happens that all political machinations is thrown away because of something unpredictable. I don't think too many chapters were spent on it to call them unnecessary scenes - at least not for the standard of the series. And Balwer will not become a main character, but he will have a part to play, so introducing him was not a total waste. Overall, you entered the place where the plot really starts slowing down. but I was always ok with it, cause i like reading about the characters and the world. I was in for the trip, not just the destination.

we all know that szeth slaughtered a room with three shardbearers and dozens of soldiers with half-shards in it with barely any effort. elokar knew it as well. I'd call his reaction much more rational than that of the others, if not for the simple fact that you can't outrun szeth unless you are a windrunner yourself. Anyway, being terrified by szeth is nothing if not acceptable. I would not call anyone a coward for that.