Ixthos

Will do, though I'll have to do so later. I am enjoying this though - hope you have a great day!

@Aspiring Writer Ahhh, sorry, I didn't phrase that last part well. What I mean is, as you included telekinesis, which involves using the mind to affect the physical world, would you also consider astral projection (using the mind to sense the physical world in areas where someone else might not be, so not using their senses but rather sensing through a projection of yourself), or pyrokinesis (producing flame or controlling an object's temperature around you, possibly an outgrowth of telekinetically vibrating the molecules of an object), or forming an object out of psionic energy, would those also be included as possible abilities?

Possible inclusions: Sensing minds - so not telepathic sensing of thoughts or emotions, but locating minds and their locations Sensing the touch of a mind on an object, or something's relation to a person Placing sensations in an area which someone who enters the area can sense, or trap Multi tasking mentally You included telekinesis. Would similar abilities, like projecting your mind or fire, also be included? Or only abilities related to thought?

This is something percolating for a while now, but I think the Dor - or rather, the Dor's impact on Sel - and the Sibling are very similar. Both have a strong tie to the land, and both are the combination of two shards, albeit the Dor is more polarised and in opposition. I think each region on Sel is likely the equivalent of the Sibling, and so each is either self aware of semi-self aware, and likely trying to absorb their own neighbours. I think Elantris and the surrounding regions of Arelon were probably one of the more mature regions, and the Chasm formed when another region tried to wound or weaken it. That also could have a tie to a Fisher-king scenario, with Wyrn being the equivalent of a Bondsmith for the nation and assimilated regions of Fjorden.

Or ... there are very few ways of saying this that don't sound dirty, and they probably don't exist in Dragonsteel considering the intelligence and possible independence of dragons in the Cosmere, but he might have been a dragon rider. Either that or they were just really close, her seeing in him the best qualities of a person regardless of race, especially taking into account her ability to change appearance. He probably was Yolen's equivalent of a paladin.

Fractal. That is the single best name for one of them. And from there - indeed, they are all fractals - based on their shape we can get Koch, Sierpinski, Hilbert, Mandelbrot, Julia, Cantor, and my personal favourite, Dragon Curve.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Awaken! Behold the eye of Beauty.

I think the shards are each playing their own game, but all on the same board and you can sometimes move your opponents' pawns. They likely use whatever resources are on hand, and can see which resources are likely to come into their area of influence, but can also potentially hide some things from one another. So it could be that Cultivation and Endowment both have plans for Nightblood, and both those plans coincided, or that Endowment intends for Nightblood to be in a certain area for a while and Cultivation is taking advantage of it. It could be them cooperating, but I think it is more likely each is simply selecting the futures that are more advantageous to them, and while Endowment seems to want each shard to do its own thing, she likely set Nightblood up as insurance for this, while Cultivation saw in possible futures Nightblood would be a useful tool. Whose future sight is better though is the question, and who can better leverage futuresight. Also, I like to think Endowment's "I see you!" was actually her bluffing. "I totally know when you're here! I am definitely not pretending!"

Hi everyone :-) Quick reminder, if you voted in this poll please also vote in the Triarku alien poll. I'm going to leave them open for another week, and then close them after opening the solar system poll. Once that poll has been closed I will provide a full summary of the setting - some of which will be spoilers for the planned story and future stories - including the other possible aliens and magic systems that could have developed, though I won't give alternative planets. You can find the link to the aliens here: Hope everyone has a great day or night, or evening, morning :-)

I think the one things that would make sense is that, as the memories destroyed were recent, damaging them wouldn't constitute harm to Hoid, as those memories hadn't yet become a part of who he is. Otherwise, taking all his memories, rewriting his personality, those would certainly be harm. It also is possible that, as Hoid is so tightly linked to his powers, his investiture automatically stores his memories, part of his mind being in them, and Odium could feel which parts were recent memories and which ones were locked in.

You can request it in the Aether of Night topic:

I'm hoping the Aethers are across several worlds, especially if I'm right about one of them - if you've read Aether of Night you know which one - which could be useful in making spaceships, though another could also still be useful for travel across worlds. It is implied there are twelve Aether types now, and we already know Aethers have been mentioned several times now in Stormlight, so this could all be to set up for when Aethers - and if Foil is heavily involved in their future impact - are important to Era 4. I've personally also wondered which shard would best match Aethers, assuming they are related to one shard rather than being a natural manifestation which no single shard claims, though shards might be able to interfere with and produce new ones.

That would be cool - and it brings to mind the same sort of possibilities as Taldain seems to imply, with the two different skies. Though now I'm also wondering how a flying species would affect the cognitive realm's tendency to flatten the space? The picture in my mind of Foil - and I like this so much its actually got me thinking of an entire species for my setting - is a creature vaguely like an octopus, and each limb is bonded to a different aether, with Foil trying to find a way to maintain control of all of them. I like the aquatic dragon idea too, and it makes me wonder how old Foil is, and if Foil is an aquatic dragon if he came from Yolen or is the equivalent of a singer, a dragon like species related to dragons as singers related to humans.

That would be cool :-) I also would have liked to see a hypothetical story where Ruin clashed with Odium (Marsh and the inquisitors vs the Fused, Ruin and Odium's passions against each other), as I think it is the one villainous shard which could stand up to Odium and win, though the shards aren't truly villainous but some are more easily seen as negative rather than positive. Cosmic use of a shards power however I agree is definitely something I think the story could use.

A very salient point, though the implications are very risky. Before Harmony was inhibited he did amazing things, reshaping the planet, changing the orbit, restoring lost life. And before that, if you count the Well, Rashek likewise did amazing things, in a sense the opposite of Harmony, including warping life to change an entire people group into mistwraiths - and that is frightening. Odium also implied if he were free he would change the people on the planet. I'm hoping we do see more impressive and terrifying things, but remember if the shards weren't restricted they could literally do anything they want to the characters. Could you see a compelling story where the villain could choose to turn anyone they want into an amorphous shapeshifting blob, or rewrite them to be loyal to them? Then the only reason the characters wouldn't lose is because the villain is incompetent. Taravangian is smart, so the danger should be from his intelligence and from few other characters realising Odium now has a new mind focusing it - we shouldn't see the shards unleashed against mortals, they couldn't stop that, but we should see the intelligent use of the abilities. Though shards fighting one another or doing interesting things elsewhere, not against the characters, would be interesting.

First, I'm hoping Foil is an alien from an aquatic species, rather than just a world hopper from a regular world who has an underwater base. Underwater bases are cool, but Cthulhu the scholar is more so. If Foil is an aquatic being, then, as the rules of the cognitive realm go, his planet, and wherever he is, would likely have an inverted relationship to the normal cognitive realm rules. That is to say, that would be a world where water is water, and land is land. I wonder what impact that would have on society and travel in that place?

Indeed! Everything I've seen about it shows it has an intricate and brilliantly told story. Here's hoping Silverlight is as diverse as Sigil :-P

Shame! What happened?

I'll see if I can do that. Hmmm ... okay, an initial crack at this. A world which is the inside of a dyson sphere around a small star, so the inhabitants all live on the inner face, no matter where they stand the star is above their heads. Some regions have a link to the star, the star's plasma actually channelled to those regions, and so those regions are usually avoided by a wide margin. But those who do travel into those regions, wearing protective clothing, can reach the structure that forms the outer rim of those plasma flows. If someone can reach it they can connect to the star, doing so they are called star-kin, and they can take some of the metal that forms the structure and shape it in the flow of plasma - wearing protective clothing to reach it initially but once connected and star-kin they are immune to the plasma and can survive any temperature below the temperature of the stars core - and that metal is now a representation of their link to the star. As long as they have it they can channel the power of the star through the item, and the manner depends on the item made, but even without the item they are long lived and immune to most temperatures. If separated from the item, such as giving it to a descendent, they can no longer use the item and the item is also weaker, but it can still be used to some small effect due to the remnant of its link to the star, and if broken the pieces can be rebuilt into multiple new items, though each weaker than the original. Society has had multiple cycles and risen and fallen many times such that few - except for a small group of those star-kin who are effectively immortal, though no-one knows why this group isn't just long lived - remember the full history of the world, or even who built it. Wars have been fought over the star-kin's objects, and few are able to make the journey to become star-kin, so few items exist on the world. There is now a quest by a group of warlords to gather all the star-kin items and combine them together, as they think if they can do this they can gain the full powers of a star-kin themselves, as well as make an item more powerful than any before, using new scientific (medieval science) knowledge, and with that power conquer the world and bring it to their ideal of order. Example items - each unique: Sword - destroy anything it strikes, or grant strength to anyone the user touches its side to Shield - indestructible. When used with the hammer it destroys everything around them for kilometres, including those using the items Telescope - see anything the holder desires, and if used to look at the star (only star-kin can survive using it like this) they can see the entire world instead Hammer - shape material it strikes into any form desired, though repeated hits are needed for most things Book (metal outer cover) - contains the contents of any book the user is thinking of, so hold it and think of a book and the book's contents will appear Sextant - grants knowledge of the surrounding area Chair - places whoever sits on it in stasis, and they can only be freed from stasis by being pulled out, but while in stasis they don't age

@Somebody from Scadrial Very nice :-) I'd say to establish a few distinct cultures if there are any - so if there is more than one nation what nations are there, and if there is any cultural crossover, sharing traits. Are there any ages, so epochs when different things were discovered or lost, when empires rose or fell, and when and how the magic was discovered. Also, if any culture eventually did figure out how to make metal weapons, and if they found a way to use the magic with it - so making metal weapon that could treat the hardened wood as though it were only wood rather than enhanced - making them stronger than the other nations, and if this caused other nations to unite to fight them. Otherwise I like it :-)

Its all good - we all start with an idea and then work on it from there. Seeing how an idea can unfold isn't always something that happens all at once. I'd be more than happy to do further speculation on this with you, though maybe tomorrow or in a few days :-) (its almost 20:00 here, and I need to do things away from the forum! :-P ) Hope you have a good one!

@Somebody from Sel Go for it :-) (though for the sentient mounts in my mind I'm having difficulty moving past thinking of them like Tauntauns from The Empire Strikes Back :-P though the space faring transport would be much larger. I'm thinking of potentially combining them with the sentient mounts though with the mounts as juveniles.)

Very interesting :-) I don't think it will tie into this setting or the meta setting, but if you like we can explore this further here :-) In a sense, if viewed from an outside observer, would you say this is like forming a wormhole, or shortening the distance between the two points in normal space, like how mass can change a seemingly straight line into a bent one? Or do you mean that the warped path is not a longer one, by affecting timespace you've made one path longer, rather than making one path shorter? In either case, this gives the impression that those entangled particles - magicky mumbo-jumbo entangled particles :-P - cause the two objects to always reach the same location at the same time, regardless of the paths they took, so long as one goes through a region of warped timespace - if it didn't require them to go through warped timespace things could get interesting if you attach one to a ferris wheel and the other to a rocket! So that implies the system could be used to allow one to reach any arbitrary speed, even ones much faster than light. So, as long as the act of warping space doesn't drain energy to produce, one could generate as much energy as you want, especially because - depending on your reference frame - a speed slightly above the speed of light in one inertial reference frame can actually be much faster in another inertial reference frame (assuming the rules of general relativity apply to faster than light speeds). So then, where does the energy come from? Perhaps ... perhaps from the warped timespace? So this could be a way to extract energy FROM a warped region, so you don't warp the region but find a warped region, and then construct this system around it ... but does that then cause the region to unwarp? And if so, could you do the same to a region of timespace that is warped the other way, one where the path is shorter if normally longer, or longer if normally shorter? This certainly has possibilities :-) I wish you luck in using it. Would you like to discuss it some more?

If you feel up to it, sure :-) though don't share anything you don't feel comfortable with someone potentially using. Its also possible some of what you say is stuff I've already given some thought to, but it also could be that this is entirely new to me and can help define the magic in a new way. (Side note, this also is partially why I'm making this setting more distant from the rest of the meta setting, with the Outsiders and Others being the in-setting name for these beings rather than the meta-setting name for them, as I'm not fully comfortable just putting all my ideas out in the open just yet. I actually felt nervous mentioning how space and time are beings in my setting, not just forces, and that is only a small part of their relationship to one another and their other relatives and the other types of spirits.) ... Also, the magic is intended not to be too over powered, a little like how the Force was presented in A New Hope, and less like The Empire Strikes Back :-P (unless there was a way to nullify telekineses ...)

Confusing and cool can both be cool :-P Part of the meta setting is about the idea that space, time, and certain other things such as will are actually entire beings - magic and technology at their highest levels work by combining the two, magic that is like technology, technology that is like magic, and a special relationship with the beings involved, especially with their fractal nature. I'm very okay with confusing as long as it still is order. (I'm also planning a series where the events in the second series take place before the first, but the characters are still from the future.) None of that is directly relevant to this story though. If you feel up to it, you can share as much as you like, and I'll mention if that can work in the framework of the story right here, or if it ties into something related to the meta setting, etc.