Ixthos

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 Okay, so the rest of this ties directly to Aether of Night, the unpublished story, and this relates to something I hope is going to still be canon.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

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: 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

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.

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 )

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?

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:

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.

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.

Yup, though tide may be a little misleading in this sense, as the moons remaining fixed means they may not notice their are different levels, each area remaining at a fixed height. Indeed - this world really is only possible with magic. I've been looking over my figures and while I think I've made several mistakes, those mistakes are ones that imply I've made the moons too small and too far away, so the actual results have the moons as both larger and closer than I've determined them to be - if anything, their orbits are even more extreme than my model shows.

This is also a world with twelve moons that are in perfect geosynchronous - technically geostationary - orbit, are so large and so close that they dominate the sky such that nowhere on the equator at least doesn't have at least one visible, and drop columns of spores with magical effects. Having vents, volcanic or otherwise, nearby to one of the locations very strongly associated with one of those moons so as to form harbour is the least unlikely element. I'm also not suggesting that this place just happens to have these properties, but that this is something common throughout the planet, that every major port is connected to the others by a chain of vents under the ocean floor, and that ships sail along specific routes at specific times to reach their harbours.

I suspect the oceans have this as a natural phenomenon, that at certain times along certain paths the ocean flood releases a flood of compressed vapour and this turns the ocean fluid, as they seemed to be in a hurry, possibly to sail in time, though that also could just be the Duke being impatient to leave - it may also be that ships can somehow induce this effect. Not a lot of details were given on what exactly happens. The quote implies that the vents are naturally occurring, as fissures in the ocean floor on our world can be called vents as well - they may be a natural phenomena, or perhaps can be induced by the ships, or both - something natural that can be triggered or one must time travel around.

Fractions of the arc, but under the assumption that the area, once rotated, is identical in proportion. Here is my reasoning, though note its been a while since I've done calculations of this nature, so if anyone can see any errors in this conclusion please let me know. If each moon always form a circle when looked at then they occupy a circular area on the "dome" of the sky, as that dome is the typical view one was of the sky from the surface - a dome ringed by the horizon. If you then shift that circle to be directly overhead then haven't changed the area, only shifted where it is. Now, if it is overhead and you take an infinitesimal slice through it from one point of the horizon, passing overhead through the very top of the dome (where the circular view of the object has been re-positioned), and to the point directly opposite that starting point, you can work out how much of that slice is taken up by the arc corresponding to the circle in that slice. If you then take another slice from any other point on the horizon through the centre and back to the horizon you will have the same result, the same proportion taken up - thus the sum of each infinitesimal slice will preserve the relationship between how much is empty sky and how much is taken up by the circle, as with sufficiently small slices the area at which they overlap within the circle tends towards zero. [Edit] Disregard the above - I hadn't thought this through as well as I'd thought; for example the area of a circle half the size of another circle is a quarter of the size of that previous circle. I will have to go over this more thoroughly later, as our Moon's area in the sky is apparently 0.2 degrees^2 but it as an arc of 0.5 degrees on average.

@Oltux72 on your previous point, I just realised one of my assumptions was flawed - because the moons are so close to the planet, and so small with respect to it, as someone moves further away the total angular area they cover in the sky would drop significantly. If someone was moving away from the first moon along the equator, at the point where the first moon begins to disappear under the horizon and the second moon begins to appear above it, the first moon would take up only 1/12 of the sky, so it would be four times as small as when seen from directly below - it still would dominate the sky, but it would be much smaller than 1/3. At the point on the equator where both are seen to be the same size each would take up only slightly more then 1/40 of the sky, and collectively would only cover 1/20. So yes, I agree, the information is very questionable - 1/3 of the sky may mean only when viewed from close to the Lunagree. The only way to make them consistently close to 1/3 would be to make them larger and position them further away, but this wouldn't fully solve the problem either, as the further away and the larger they become the closer together they become as well, and eventually they start to encroach on each other's space. Agreed, though if they are sufficiently small, and the 1/3 is only near the equator, they probably wouldn't be as impactful as a ring system would be. The equator should be the coldest area - very different to Earth - but if their shadow is sufficiently small it wouldn't be as impactful on the planet as a whole as we might assume if this only applies only to human inhabited areas near the equator. Ahhh! I can't believe I forgot about the Roche limit! I'd been doing research on it a few months back, thank you for reminding me about it! I agree - they definitely have to be held together by molecular forces or magic - gravity alone would be overcome at those distances. That and Hoid, as you noted. He certainly doesn't strike me as someone who would prioritise accurate facts over embellishments for poetic effect. I'm reminded of a short story I read a few years back, [found the name: The Pacific Mystery by Stephen Baxter], but basically, while the Earth was a sphere it was a sphere with non-Euclidean geometry, where you could keep going west and never wrap around again, a combination of a sphere and a helix in a sense. I like your suggestion about how magic could warp their perception as well, that objects can be distorted in apparent size due to magic.

I believe it is related to apogee and perigee, the furthest and closest points in the orbit of an orbiting body to the body it orbits. While the moons are stationary relative to the planet I think Brandon has still gone for the spirit of those words, so the Lunagree would be the closest point on the surface of the world to where the moons are.

I did explain this in the first post I took it as they always occupy exactly 1/3 of the sky, and so when one begins to drop below the horizon the other begins to rise, so the part that you miss becomes the part that you see on the next one (though this also means that if you move beyond the equator there are areas you can stand where you can't see them anymore). In the first image the slightly slanted blue line indicates the horizon, and the red dot on it is where you could stand where the top moon is just touching the horizon - and the further you go to the left the lower it will go - and the left moon is just about to come above the horizon. If you look on the diagram the left moon's top is just touching that blue line, while the top moon's bottom is likewise just touching it. All this is based on the assumption that Hoid recounted relatively accurate proportions about the moons though, and he likely wasn't prioritising that

They only have to be at that high due to the period involved, to make sure they orbit ("fall towards") the planet at the same rate the planet is rotating - for a different rotational period they would have a different orbit. I based my calculations on the statement they occupy 1/3 of the sky at any given time, and the assumption that when you stop seeing one you start seeing another. If the occupy 1/3 of the sky at any given time the furthest out they could be would be just over half the planet's diameter away, with orbits just over half the planet's radius - i.e. for Earth they would be touching one another if they orbited at a radius of 13208 km, well below 20000 km, and would collectively out mass the planet by a considerable margin, each being just over half the radius of the planet, and assuming uniform density with one another and the planet (a quick back of the envelop calculation says they would collectively be one and a half times the mass of the planet).