Ixthos

6 minutes ago, Bort said:

Different perspectives are all well and good, however not explaining those perspectives when you're trying to make a point really doesn't help your arguments.

Like when you are asked a question about why an open mouth has anything to do with stormlight attaching itself to your soul, and you respond with some nonsense about submarines.

If Frustration had bothered to explain his argument in more detail, then it would have made sense, instead of just being nonsense.

That said, his reply still would make little sense if he's saying it's down to the soul to hold onto stormlight, but the body is leaking it.

I'm not entirely sure I should get involved further in this argument, but if I can further this particular line for the moment, Stormlight, as Investiture, spans all three realms and interacts with, or can be made to interact with, all three. Just as Navani's intention allowed her to cause the song of Voidlight to become the song of anti-Voidlight - which is a physical alteration of the waveform to produce one that cancels out the peaks and troughs of the song of Voidlight - so to can invested things interact with and be affected by perception. We know spren respond to being measured and the starspren in Shadesmar Adolin and Shallan saw knew it was being observed. Stormlight is a physical manifestation of Investiture, and it both interacts with physical objects like Knights and gems, but also interacts with their souls, such as motivating them to move and to act, and Voidlight inducing emotions, assuming properties of one light are shared with others such that things that can affect one or be affected by one can also affect or be affected by the other. In this context, Stormlight likely also thinks of itself like a gas, as shown by Navani and Raboniel's experiments, where Stormlight and Voidlight displayed both gaseous and light-like traits. As a gas, and seen by the body as a substitute for air, means both Stormlight and the individual in question both affect how it behaves, also taking into account how Stormlight can be transformed into manifestations of the surges. Either way, in this context it is the combination of Stormlight's own self-perception (as objects in the cosmere have self perception in the Cognitive Realm, as seen by the swords that somehow felt they hadn't fulfilled their function when Shallan touched them, and the items which felt like dust was a part of them) interacting with the perception of the Knights, who physically have to breath the Stormlight in, that makes Stormlight behave like super air for the Knight, and so something that should only enter or leave through the mouth or nose, and anything else is due to flaws in the capacity of the body to contain it, imperfections letting it leak just like how a bottle with a small hole in it will let the water out even though the bottle was designed to only let the water in or out through the opening.

2 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Very few places are. You cannot, as many people would probly do, place a vortex of the icosaeder on the poles and get these eclipses. And I see no way you can get more than three vortices on a great circle with an icosaeder.

I know you meant vertex, but now I'm picturing miniature Highstorms racing around the Lunagree's on Lumar 

Depending on how many moons are visible at a time from any given location, I imagine there likely are more than three locations where this is possible - consider how the Sun traces a path through the sky, if at any point in that path it intersects a portion (not the whole) of the disc of one of those moons there will be a brief eclipse. Depending on where you are on the Earth the Sun can trace a path directly overhead, or just peak above the horizon - this is consistent across lines of latitude, but with twelve objects in the sky there are many areas which likely have at least one moon intersecting them, depending on how close the moons are and their size.

Either way, all that matters is Tress's home island is at one of those locations at least some time during the year, as perhaps at different times of the year they don't have any of these moonshadows, but at others they do. We'll just have to see how Brandon addresses this, and hopefully the Ars Arcanum as you suggested.

Just now, Bort said:

Perhaps Frustration should explain that then, instead of coming out with meaningless lines which have nothing to do with the conversation at hand.

Perhaps, and hopefully he can confirm whether or not my understanding of his argument is his intention, though its important to remember that a lot of people have somewhat different perspectives on things and what is and isn't intuitively obvious. I've been in a similar situation to Frustration's where I was trying to explain something to someone but my analogy made no sense to them while to me it was logical - I had to take a step back and reconsider how to present what was in my own mind in a manner that made sense to the other person. I think Frustration was trying to use the submarine analogy to illustrate how gases behave and a situation where gases entering and exiting one way is beneficial and accounted for and even expected, but another way is a design flaw, and working on the assumption that in the Spiritual and Cognitive Realm Stormlight is treated as a gas, but that wasn't sufficiently illustrated to be clear to everyone - Stormlight being seen by souls as a gas and so being treated as such was likely his starting assumption, but that wasn't made fully clear.

Online discussions can become frustrating, but it is important to remember the other person - either way I hope, if my assessment is accurate, this puts you and @Frustration and @Nameless on the same page, and hopefully the conversation can continue from this point with a common frame of reference. I hope my analogy helped.

Just now, Oltux72 said:

If a moon is to fill a third of the arc, it will fill the space between the 60° angles at the lunagri. Hence if you are more than 30° + axial tilt away from the equator, no eclipses.

True, but again that means she doesn't have to be exactly on the equator, and so there is a range of possible locations she could be on that have this effect, and we are also accounting for this being a regional thing, that not everywhere on the planet is subject to these sorts of eclipses.

@Frustration and @Nameless I think you may be talking partially past each other on this. I think Frustration is talking about the oxygen you inhale that isn't absorbed into your bloodstream (as not all oxygen diffuses across the membrane of the alveoli) and so when you breath out immediately after breathing in some of the oxygen in the air you inhaled is exhaled without entering into the bloodstream, just as some of the carbon dioxide in the vessels around the alveoli remains in the body rather than leaving. I think Nameless is getting at the point that, when you breath in, any oxygen that is absorbed by the blood remains in the body until it is used, and so any oxygen in the bloodstream will remain within you and not leave when you breath out. Not all the oxygen you breath in enters your bloodstream (Frustration's argument), but any oxygen that is absorbed doesn't leave until it has been used and combined to form carbon dioxide (Nameless's argument).

@Frustration and @Bort I think Frustration's argument is that, to the soul of the person, Stormlight is like air, and is treated like a type of super air by the person's soul. Air, by design, only enters and leaves your body through our mouth and nose, rather than through the skin, and so Stormlight and the soul both see an open mouth or nose - or exhaling through the mouth or nose - as being legitimate ways of leaving the body, where as the skin is simply because the container isn't fully suited to hold that substance. Because magic - and magic associated strongly with how people perceive things, both consciously and unconsciously - is involved, when someone breaths in Stormlight they are in effect breathing in a gas, and the soul treats it as if it were a gas.

33 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Note that this also kills the equatorial band of spore oceans theory of the water cycle and that solution to the fish problem. Indeed it means most of the world's oceans, if not all, must be spores.

I would hope for these answers to be included in the Ars Arcanum.

Indeed! Though we may not have to throw away all our assumptions. It could also be that the creatures Hoid is describing, when not said by a character in world, are ones the listeners would know but not necessarily Tress's people (so the seal example could be entirely for the listener's benefit, rather than a comparison one of Tress's people would make). Likewise, depending on how the twelve moons are arranged, the Verdant moon may have an equatorial orbit, or one sufficiently close that, for example, the sun passes through it like a cord rather than through the centre, so the moon is slightly offset from the equator but still close enough that it does cover it - and that is assuming Tress's island is on the equator as well. 

I am interested to see how the water cycle works though, considering Brandon hinted that the book contains a scene with rain falling on the ocean.

Brandon has confirmed that, baring feedback from his science contacts, he intends the planet and the moons to be related like the faces of a duodecahedron (or vertices of a icosahedron), which was my alternative suggestion, though that definitely would mean they are held in place rather than orbiting, perhaps with each effectively "lashed" to a point on the axis the planet rotates around, much like how Windrunners can redefine where gravity is pulling them. I'd like to do an updated take on this later to get a better feel, though I will assume the 1/3 is more poetic and accounts for the arc rather than the solid area taken up. That probably will be a while away though.

I'm with @AquaRegia on this. There may be multiple methods of FTL, but Cognitive Realm travel certainly counts. It likely bypasses causality issues due to the Cognitive Realm likely having - ironically - a consistent frame of reference, but if someone got a ship into the Cognitive Realm and then used it to travel quickly to another world and then returned to the Physical Realm that would be FTL. There possibly is still speed bubble based Physical Realm FTL, but Cognitive Realm travel is just as deserving of that term.

3 hours ago, AquaRegia said:

I love it.  I don't think it's going to happen... but I still love it!

If it DOES happen, you will have earned the title "The Oracle of the Cosmere".

Thanks!  well, lets add this to my list of Cosmere theories along with my two big ones:

• Silverlight is located where Ambition died / a large chunk of Ambition's corpse
• Ten people will take up Honour (possibly combined with parts or the whole of Cultivation and / or Odium)

But Charlie the Cosmere Corpate is probably the craziest 

3 minutes ago, Mazman said:

Wow. This sounds ... unlikely. Unlikely but possible. And it sort of makes sense considering he was inspired by The Princess Bride.

Indeed - I'd be surprised if my theory on this is what happens, but excited too. I just really want to see if Ferrous aethers are still a thing and still canon.

So while The Princess Bride may have been the initial inspiration for Tress of the Emerald Sea, I suspect the plot will be a little closer to The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, where the female protagonist goes to free her male friend from a mystic woman. It may not follow that plot structure, I think that it likely will lean in on some parts of that story.

However ... I'm assuming everyone reading this knows the plot of The Princess Bride, so I will come out right now and say something rather important to that plot

... don't read beyond this spoiler block if you haven't seen The Princess Bride.

Now, you may see where I am going with this. But maybe not - after all, the villain (or the person presented as an antagonist, but lets be real, the duke is the real villain so far, and the sorceress may actually be heroic or friendly) is called the sorceress (and without a capitol letter - that is odd, though the duke didn't get one either). Last I checked Charlie wasn't likely to be the sort to take on that name - he'd probably be the sorcerer if he did. Either way, it is unlikely Charlie will replace her.

Unless ...

Okay, so the rest of this ties directly to Aether of Night, the unpublished story, and this relates to something I hope is going to still be canon. So the rest of this post is in spoilers.

41 minutes ago, dbulick said:

I like what you are saying.  My personal head canon is that they are not trying to collect all the different magic systems, but they are trying to collect Connection to all the various shards.  I feel like they traveling planet to planet to in order to have offspring that will be connected enough to each shard to be able to take up the big A when the time comes.

Ahhh, I didn't word my post as well as I'd liked - that basically is what I'm thinking as well, not so much powers but connection through the powers or just connected to the Shards through being connected to the planets the Shards are bound to or settled on. Though I'm also wondering if they intend to collectively take up the power, much like how I think Honour will be taken up by a group of ten people together. I think a whole people taking up the Power could have interesting implications in the Cosmere's future.

This is definitely not the way I expected this thread to go.

• Hover tanks (possibly storing weight of the vehicle and steel pushes)
• Portable perpendicularity generators - both to escape, to visit planets from ships, and so forth
• Hazekillers equipped with countermeasures for any given invested individual
• Space stations with a Cognitive Realm presence
• Fields to counter any given invested individual while allowing others to function as normal
• Universal translators based on connection
• Fortune-based ship navigation like in Dune
• VR Cognitive Realm based internet

[Edit] Just remembered this was the Mistborn subforum, so the rest are Cosmere spoilers:

So this is about the Iriali. To be brief, I think they are travelling from world to world for much the same reason many fans think Hoid is travelling - to gather magic and parts of the Shards to reunite them back into the Power. Thus I think each planet they stop on is in some way associated with one or preferably more Shards.

Now it doesn't seem feasible to do this over the course of seven planets - assuming the first planet they started on was their home system - as by implication there are only three planets that have two or more Shards, being Sel, Scadrial, and Roshar. If they have or intend to visit Sel and Scadrial at some point then they will have been exposed to at least seven Shards' powers, leaving nine to cover four worlds, which wouldn't make sense if those nine were on two planets each, as we know Endowment is not happy that so many other Shards keep interacting with each other, and as aethers are present on multiple worlds - including Tress's planet, which the Iriali had visited at some point before - and may predate the Shattering they likely aren't associated very strongly with any single Shard, but I think there are ways around it.

• Aethers could naturally be linked to one or more Shards, or as they are pre-shattering they somehow are partially connected to all or several
• Shards may have moved from world to world, or other Shards besides Autonomy may have formed Avatars, and worlds they have been on in the past or worlds Shards will visit in the future will contain connections to multiple Shards they can exploit
• Related to the previous point, if the eventually visit Scadrial - or visited it in the past - they may be able to gain a connection to Trell and whichever Shard Trell is related to, most likely Autonomy, and similar situations may have occurred before. We already know other Shards have visited Scadrial in the past:

Quote

Menderbug

Was Scadrial visited by any other Shard before the events of Mistborn? If so, which one?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. Several.

General Signed Books 2018 (March 8, 2018)

• Threnody, being influenced by Ambition's splinters, was also possibly influenced by Mercy and Odium, and so if they settled on Threnody at any point - those poor poor people - they could, over the course of four planets (Sel, Scadrial, Roshar, and Threnody) become connected to anywhere between nine and ten Shards, leaving only six for the remaining three worlds
• They may not need to settle on planets connected to every Shard, but use some as a home base for later travels and send operatives out to other planets once they have become more established
• Endowment is implied to have only recently settled on Nalthis due to the Returned being a recent phenomenon, though this is speculation. If she had been on some other world, her distaste for Shards settling together notwithstanding, they may have acquired a connection to her already and thus could avoid her world while having become connected to her and another Shard at the same time
• If some Shards have a presence in the Cognitive Realm somewhere between worlds they are visiting, they may still pass closely enough within its influence to connect to it in some way

I realise this does seem like a stretch, but it would potentially address something that I've been wondering - if they visit a planet with a magic system, when they leave do they still retain individuals with those systems?

The question becomes how do they know they need to visit seven worlds for whatever their goals are - is this a cultural belief that isn't based on anything specific to the cosmere, or could it be linked to Fortune, something they know will happen in their future or they need, or is likely to happen or be needed? Do they actually need to visit seven worlds, or could they have - if this is right - accomplished this some other way?

Of course this is entirely speculation and could be completely unrelated to their reasons for travelling, though I think it is interesting to speculate on. What are your thoughts? Why do you think the Iriali have been travelling? Thank you for reading  have a great day or afternoon or evening or night 

15 hours ago, AidenTollis said:

My current theory is that books 6-10 of Stormlight is that the events of book 5 will lead to a technological revolution, and that arc 2 will follow the events of Rosharans finding space travel at the end of book 10. As this is set after Era 2 of Mistborn, and in the 6th Of The Dusk Sequel, there is obviously an arms race between Scadrial and Roshar. Roshar will have to have had an extremely fast technological growth for them to even compete with Era 4 Scadrial.

There relative technological growth rate will probably slow down a bit, but I do believe Stormlight 6 to 10 will involve space travel in the Rosharan system, as evidenced by, if I remember correctly, Brandon calculating how long a Windrunner would take to reach the moons of Roshar, though I don't know if he confirmed if he calculated any other figures for travel between planets. It likely will take longer before they can use those ships outside of the Rosharan system, but I think Stormlight 6 to 10 will feature movement towards interplanatary travel via ships as well as Shadesmar.

Firstly, there are green stars at the bottom, which is physically impossible (as more green light is emitted by a star the amount of red will shift it more towards yellow, and by the time it reaches blue it looks closer to white), so those may not be starts but planets, though they could be stars with magic affecting their colour.

None of the stars in the star chart from Arcanum Unbounded are blue, and there are a few blue stars in this image, so it likely can't be fully grounded. From Hoid's appearance, though, this is a place he doesn't seem to have any trouble going with his natural hair colour. This could be some world we haven't seen yet.

(Also, I know this doesn't apply to the planet, but I like the key-cosmere symbol pin on his cloak, and he seems to have a wide array of interesting items on his belt.)

[Edit] For anyone reading this topic after the fact, this is the image:

Secret project 3 - two people with some form of flying magic, so some combination of a Windrunner, Skybreaker, Mistborn, Steel Misting (may be Twinborn), and aethers that enable flight (as we know Syl was originally designed as a type of aether for a story Brandon was thinking of calling Climb the Sky).

Secret project 4 - set on a space station, spy thriller, future of the Cosmere but only giving hints at what will happen.

All of these will be on new worlds but may reference worlds currently known.

I like this theory - it really opens up the possible aethers and their potential powers. I wonder if secret project 3 has two people who have an air and smoke aether, respectively.

It would be interesting to see how aethers interact with gemstones - or if a Knight gained an aether, and depending on which aether and their order - especially with regards to soulcasting. There certainly is an irony with Corpates in general being associated with the essence of Willshapers, who enjoy freedom, but that only furthers my theory on Corpate starships.

3 hours ago, LewsTherinTelescope said:

He mentions that "one of the twelve is always visible, no matter where you travel", which I took to indicate that they're not just on the equator, but it's not really certain. But combined with the fact that only one moon is visible where Tress is, it feels to me like they'd have to be spread out, because I don't think someone closer to the poles would see any, in that case? But this is entirely gut feeling and I know exactly nada of the physics involved, so I could be wrong.

I feel like it's extremely likely that future drafts of the book will give up on trying to make it at all a true orbit, going off all the issues raised here, tbh.

That does seem likely. We'll just have to see what Brandon ends up saying. If they aren't in a true orbit and instead are maintaining their position through magic then they may be making a duodecahedron configuration, with a moon possibly floating above each pole. It would space them out some more and ensure each part of the planet has one visible, though if Brandon wants them to orbit and be seen from all parts of the planet they would have to be orbiting much further out, and would have to occupy much less of the sky - for now I'll assume Hoid was exaggerating the percentage they take up (he is the sort to do that - consider the Duke's speech when introducing his new heir )

3 minutes ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

@Ixthos Thanks for the great reply! I figured that would be the ans but I wasn't confident about it. I think this really confirms how wierd shadesmar is.

Aren't there more technologically advanced societies in cosmere that already know this and their subastral is still flat?

You're welcome 

I think that ties to two or three factors which I can't confirm but I suspect to be the case. The first is the presence of minds - so people knowing something doesn't have as much of an impact as someone actually being there, so areas of habitation are expanded, but areas which are only known about are only partially expanded. Rosharans know about their gas giants, but the gas giants have only a small presence - I think a few people living in an area has a greater impact on that area then lots of people knowing something about a different uninhabited area knowing something about that area, though both still have an impact.

The second is conjecture, but I think there is also a difference between "knowing" something intellectually, and knowing it through experience. We know how far apart planets are in the real world, but when you look at scale images it still blows one away - I think the quality of the knowledge, whether it is experience vs purely informational. I know the world is round, but I also know the area immediately nearby is for all intents and purposes flat - that likely shapes the local area, and multiple local beliefs of the area being effectively flat combine into a total perception of the ground in general being flat - you know the world is round, but the Cognitive Realm only cares about or mainly prioritises your local belief.

The third factor is also that the Cognitive Realm has its own rules - water becomes solid and large bodies of water connect to the space between planets, and it may be that only sufficiently powerful beliefs can change that. There also seems to be some sort of mountainous areas in Shadsmar that I suspect connect to the other planets in the Rosharan system, so it could be that there is a natural "pull" each subastral has on the nearby areas, and so despite what people believe the geometry warps to connect disparate areas, though we'll have to see what Brandon further reveals. Myself I'd be very interested to see how an O'Niell Cylinder appears in the Cognitive Realm and how it connects to other areas, as those are small enough that people living in them likely would perceive their curvature and transpose that into the Cognitive Realm - then the question becomes how would it relate to any planet it may be orbiting - what direction would correspond to the planet, or would it be isolated? There are many interesting possible combination of properties.

• Just as the spores rain down on the planet, does matter or energy or investiture from the planet go to the moons - is there something keeping the whole planet from being covered in spores, and are the moons at risk of running out of spores?
• Brandon mentioned the Princess Bride as an inspiration - are the spores likewise in any way conceptually related to Thread from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series?
• Are the moons positioned around the planet like the numbers of a clock - so all twelve equally spaced around the equator - or do they have a more exotic distribution?
• How accurate is Hoid's statement about the proportion of the sky being taken up by the moons - are they visible from every location on the planet?
• What does the Cognitive Realm of this planet look like, considering the spores are the equivalent of water, and water is solid in the Cognitive Realm of both seen subastrals?
• Are the spores part of the Aether system - so each could in theory become an Aether - or are they byproducts, i.e. would a Verdent Aether form from a spore or would it itself be able to grow spores, or both?
• Will we see the effect of other colours of spores getting wet?
• Do the people eat the vines produced by the Verdant spores?
• Are the moons core Aethers, and are there core Aethers on or near other worlds?

14 hours ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

If I had a friend who was sailing from the west in shinovar to Natanatan in the east in the physical realm, to definitely prove that Roshar is a globe perhaps and I was chasing his life-flame representation in the cognitive realm, what would my path look like?

The nerdiest answers are welcome

We don't know how it is structured yet, but we do know spren have difficulty crossing that zone, and that you get to a point where if you walk in Shadsmar in a particular direction you leave the planet, while the corresponding area would wrap to the other side of the planet. So it seems there is a point where it stretches and disconnects, where the more you move in one way the further you go. Think of it like having a book - you take the middle pages and bend them around to touch edges, then tape them together, while the rest you let spread out below - don't do this to an actual book. The loop is the planet, where you can keep going around to reach the other side, while the other pages are Shadsmar, where the further you go eventually you leave the shadow of the loop, even though some areas clearly map between the two zones (the overlay of the original pages / the continent of Roshar) and others don't (the pages now away from the loop / the seas in the physical realm and the space between planets in Shadsmar).

In theory if enough people started to live around Roshar, on islands and so forth, Shadsmar would change and new roads would have to be made, but it may be that then one could travel around Roshar in Shadsmar, but it would take people believing and seeing Roshar are round. Until then the intuitive sense they have of their world sets the oceans as boundaries, and so allows travel to other worlds as those areas aren't "in use" in the minds of the inhabitants.

This may give more information:

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

Shadesmar is an inversion of Roshar. In the Physical Realm, planets are disconnected, but in Shadesmar you can reach one from the other. Is there a point in Shadesmar where I can instantly cross between diametrically opposed points on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, technically there is, but oceans, etc. are problematic since there's not enough minds there. There are points, but the transition is more steady than instantaneous. It will be hard, since you're basically leaving the planet when you go far enough. If you just went south, you'd end up on another planet. Kind of yes. Shadesmar gets funky because you end up in no man's land. We'd need to do the exact maths on that one.

Footnote: On the way back to the signing table, he talked to me about this question. He said it ought to be possible, but really would have to check out the maths behind it.
Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

1 hour ago, Oltux72 said:

The spores "filter down". We must assume that the moons eject them on purpose for an unknown reson by an unknown mechanism.

But I am afraid the eclipses dictated that they are on the equator and Diggen's Point is a tropical island.

Regular occultations require a satellite over the tropics.

I agree on that, I'm just noting that for the spores to land below the moon they would have to be specifically targeted at that area - compare how the moons drop the spores vs how Threadfall happened in the Dragonriders of Pern series.

We know that the Emerald Sea had such eclipses, but it isn't clear if all inhabited areas have those moonshadows. I don't doubt Tress's home is on the equator, I'm just wondering if ALL the inhabited areas are by the equator, and if the moons are only over the equator.

10 minutes ago, AquaRegia said:

I, for one, have reached the point where I don't feel like it makes much sense to continue trying to explain this system using actual physical laws, at least, not until we get more information.  Those moons (and the seas of spores, for that matter) are just flat-out magic.

And I thought the Rosharan moons were a problem! pffff  (protip: they are)

Yup! Even dropping the spores in a column doesn't make much sense. I also am starting to wonder if the moons are supposed to be located all around the planet, not just on the equator, but I need to reread the descriptions again. If that is the case though then they also can't be orbiting, they would have to be floating above the surface of the planet somehow.