Oudeis

While I'm trying to focus on Endowment when it comes to restrictions, since any other Shard (as stated in OP) might have any number of reasons why they are unable to take certain actions, I am going to point out what they can do. Preservation appeared before Elend, before he was a Mistborn. In fact, he had enough physical presence to stab Elend. Later, without being able to use spoken language, Preservation can nevertheless convey meaning through gestures. What is preventing Endowment from appearing as a spirit before Blushweaver and indicating, "you are in danger." If I were a spirit with no capacity but to show up in front of someone and make an attack, you'd think faking a few attacks would at least convince that person, "Man, am I ever going to surround myself with a LOT of guards tonight..." which is all Blushweaver would have had to do to save herself and prevent the Pahn Kahl from getting all the Lifeless she had control of. In fact, while the Pahn Kahl surely had a plan to capture Lightsong himself, Lightsong's "prophetic" Visions, which may or may not be Endowment trying to communicate, led him directly to them. With his Command Phrase for the other half of the Lifeless. If his Vision had led him to decide randomly to stay at Weatherlove's palace that evening, or to be guarded by Awakeners, or, gee, I dunno, "Hey, these Pahn Kahl servants plan to kidnap you and spark a war," or something specific and useful... the Pahn Kahl played their hand by kidnapping Blushweaver before they knew they had Lightsong. Kalad's Phantoms would never have been necessary; Lightsong could have sent his half of the Lifeless to stop the half the Pahn Kahl controlled, resulting in either victory for his side or a Lifeless army reduced enough by infighting to pose no threat to the Idrians. Granted, he wouldn't have been there to heal the God King, but again, there were plenty of Returned already having Visions all around. No reason they had to successfully kidnap Susebron. So, why doesn't She? Why doesn't Endowment pop up as a spirit and make vague, threatening gestures at Blushweaver? Why doesn't she just stab Bluefingers herself? The fighting got pretty close at times. Lifeless bodies are still human, and the reason they get by on only one Breath is because they obey their human bodies. Immortal Endowment could have teleported around the palace cutting into Achilles Tendons, literally crippling the Pahn Kahl ability to take the Palace and God King. Why didn't she? Why couldn't she?

Let's look at one obvious example: Just talking to people. But before that, a basic question. Why do Returned, Return? We have Stennimar's POV of standing outside the world talking briefly to someone, before deciding to take the opportunity presented and come back to life to change the future. Can it be deduced from this that Endowment has the capacity to predict what is to come, and that he or she has an interest in history going one way versus the other? Why, or what these motives might be, is a question perhaps best left for another day. I personally believe that yes, she (I'm just gonna say she. Y'all use whichever pronouns you wish. I concede it's just a time-saving device on my part) is trying to affect the course of history, and she does it primarily by sending dead people back to their bodies to affect the course of human events. Yet, Endowment speaks only in that moment. Even when a Returned shambles around without knowing why he or she has come back, even when Lightsong loses his faith, no situation has yet been dire enough for Endowment to speak to anyone. Is this choice? A few words to Blushweaver would have warned her of her fate and convinced her to gather just a few Lifeless guards near her that evening; she'd never have been captured, and her twenty-thousand Lifeless would never have fallen under Pahn Khal control. Did Endowment choose not to give this warning, or was she unable to do so? At that point, prescience wasn't even required. Surely she should have known? Bluefingers may have kept his secrets from mortals, but did he truly manage to hide them from the eyes of Endowment?

Except that the Five Scholars didn't stop figuring things out because there was nothing left to figure out. They were figuring things out right up to, and into, the Manywar. Yesteel and the first invention of Ichor-Alcohol. The One-Breath Commands for Lifeless. Nightblood. They stopped discovering things because Peacelover decided things were getting out of hand and put it all on ice. But he's not in charge anymore. He gave them specific orders not to use the treasure, somehow the other three Scholars all faded into the background, and he left. It would be coincidence well beyond belief that the Scholars, for entirely separate reasons, all decided to quit BioChroma literally just as they figured out all there is to know. And I challenge your idea that "once someone invented the first real sword, the technology of weapons stopped until made obsolete by gunpowder." We're discovering new, lightweight, strong alloys, even today. New methods of casting, of forging. New structural designs. When the world began checking for weapons by metal content, people invented carbon-fiber knives. Someone realized that a ceramic knife could be better under certain circumstances. People have never stopped improving on swords, even after we got rail guns and space-based lasers. No branch of science anywhere just stops for no reason, weapons least of all. That applies to blades in our world and BioChroma on Nalthis. You're right in that the book never flat-out says, "They don't discover anything new," but they never discover anything new. There's nothing anyone but Vasher does that's in any way innovative from how things were three hundred years ago. Can you imagine a single technology, literally any innovation a human has come up with, not being fundamentally different in three centuries? Our ancestors from three hundred years ago would stand aghast at the complexities of the modern doorknob. Beds. What could be simpler than a bed? Soft place to lose consciousness. We've got beds that incline. We've got beds that heat, beds that mold to your body. America is barely 200 years old. If you showed our forefather's a PosturePedic they wouldn't be able to even. Also, I hope the answer isn't as boring as, "Visions told them to." That's just lazy writing. Like many other people in this thread, you speak of a slower rate of progress. But progress didn't slow. You claim that all there is to be known about an entire branch of BioChroma was discovered in less than a century... and then you see nothing unusual about the fact that three hundred more years can go past without a single innovation, without one new breakthrough. You think this is just slowing down? Three times the entire history of a branch of science has passed without a single popularly known innovation. When has this happened in human history? How long must we go between breakthroughs for you to label something, rather than a slow-down, a complete freeze? I'm not very well-versed in the history of book printing or how long ago things were fundamentally different, but if you think there will not soon be major advancements in the printing of books, you have a pleasant shock in store for you. Printed electronics has been kicking around for years, but with the recent explosion in the Maker movement they're taking off like there's no tomorrow. It's not gonna take long before you read a hardback of Warbreaker where the first Command to "Fetch Keys" actually shimmers across the visible spectrum like Breath itself. A hundred years from now, printed books will look nothing like they do right now. I just don't believe that in three hundred years, BioChroma could remain totally and utterly stagnant. Again, it's super boring if BioChromatic innovation only came about because God got bored and just gave humanity the cheat code. Where's the fun in that? They aren't Scholars then, any more than five kids would be the smartest kids in class if the teacher just gave them the answers ahead of every test. I have absolutely not a shred of evidence from the text to say that this isn't the case, but every time huge important world events get explained away by "God did it because otherwise the story wouldn't happen" the Cosmere gets that much more boring. And I've wondered about the siblings Returning. I think I had a post about it somewhere. Were they siblings before they Returned? Did the Cult of Returned organize their Returned by family, the way the Iridescent Tones currently assigns them divine portfolios? You're right; if they are literal biological siblings, that's weird. But maybe there was a big fire and Shashara and VaraTreledees both died trying to rescue orphan puppies who also have dyslexia, and both Returned from the same event, and the Cult decreed, "This makes you Returned Siblings!" I think it warrants a question of Mr. Sanderson to see what specifically is meant by them being Siblings. VaraTreledees had the Royal Locks, meaning he was once a member of the ruling family of Hanald, making him a distant relative of Siri and Vivenna. If his family Returns more often, that's interesting to note. Have Idrian royalty had a bizarre penchant for Returning that we don't know about? I feel like Vivenna would know about it, and there were times it would have been natural for her to bring it up. Much to think about, indeed.

Nalthis is a unique place in the cosmere, seen from a deific standpoint. Scadrial had two opposing Shards, and ultimately one Shard made of two opposing Intents who has difficulty acting in a meaningful way. Roshar originally had two Shards who seemed to work together, but all we've ever seen has been after Odium showed up to shake things up. Sel had two Shards who may have worked together, may have opposed each other, or may have operated independently, but are dead now. Threnody and First of the Sun don't have full Shards. Nalthis is the only place that has a single Shard operating without, that we know of, any directly opposing force. I believe, and I think most people will agree, that Shards must follow certain rules. They are not, in fact, omnipotent. I think Nalthis might be a good place for us to try to figure out what manner of things Shard can do, and which they can't. We will examine what we can deduce of Endowment's motives, which are little enough. We will search for examples of what Endowment does or doesn't do to achieve these motives. By finding things Endowment expressly doesn't do in his or her own best interest, we might be able to determine what constrains a Shard. We will compare things we have seen other Shards do in their own bailiwicks, especially the things that would have aided Endowment. I have some thoughts, but first I want to open the floor, see what other people think.

I see Shan Elariel as blonde, and Serene as dark-haired, though I'm pretty sure those in-text are swapped. I heard Mr. Sanderson speak once, this was actually a hilariously long response to my question which, in totality, was "Say this: Sazed" (my attempt to get a pronunciation), and he waxed philosophic and very excitedly about how each reader is the director of the movie in his own mind. He seemed very pleased with this phenomenon, the idea that there are a million versions of the Stormlight Archives as they exist, with large or small changes, in all of our minds. I think he would very much like this thread.

Actually Mistborn was my favorite for exactly that reason.

I personally see it as sorta a split between the two. You're right, someone at the Fifth Heightening would have a strong sense, even if it's not a complete awareness like the Sixth Heightening, of how to Awaken; Vasher even comments that Vivenna, who is only at the Second Heightening, had a noticeable advantage. I could see the Returned, coming back for a week and visiting a friend of his former life who was dying, suddenly finding the words springing to his lips in front of witnesses. From that point on, it really is only a matter of time before people figure out how to pass Breaths around, and when someone gets a bunch of them, other Commands start to become Instinctive, too. I typically try to shy away from "prophecy made him do it." I find it to be a storytelling crutch, which is why I'm so glad he typically doesn't use it in his other books.

Make sure to ask this to specify exactly what you mean; spren apparently exist on every world, but are only visible and interact with the physical realm on Roshar. Was Elend's Lerasium-bronze stronger than Vin's hemalurgically enhanced bronze?

Mistborn

Hrm... A few thoughts... But if no one knew how to Awaken, how did they know how to transfer Breaths? Is the basic, "My Breath to Yours" Command not really considered Awakening? Who taught them even that basic Command? Eh. That's a possible explanation, but I don't know that it rings true. First, you don't need people at more than the Fifth Heightening to Awaken. Obviously, the more Breaths you have the easier it is to learn how to do things, but the only reason the benchmark in the first place was the Sixth Heightening was because we needed someone who could Awaken instinctively, since people didn't know Awakening even existed. Now that everyone does, anyone with fifty Breaths can Awaken their cloak to lift them above a crowd and check the front of the line. Someone with 300 Breaths is well set up to start experimenting, and such a person you'd think would be eager to learn how to do more with his small store of Breaths, compared to mighty Awakeners. I totally buy that progress would slow if the only people researching were rich fanatics with a few hundred Breaths, but progress didn't slow. It ground to a complete halt, and that's shocking. Also, the Hallandren have two undeniable traits that we've seen. They have a massive, nearly unstoppable army (of Awakened Lifeless, no less) to crush their enemies. And their government, priests, and citizens use Awakening for important events and casual use. I can see the thought process that would lead a country to dissuade people from researching Awakening so as to prevent WMDs. I don't think the government, which very much enjoys the military superiority brought about by Awakening, would be so unanimous that all Awakening science must be squashed that they would successfully halt all progress for three centuries. I'm not saying it's impossible that some culture somewhere would come to this philosophy. I'm saying that what we know of Hallandren seems to indicate that they would not agree with this philosophy. Huh. My reading of the Epilogue caused me to assume that Yesteel himself was the tyrant. It never occurred to me until this moment to read the sentence as to indicate that Yesteel is working with a tyrant. Now I wonder which it will be...

As someone wearing a mistcloak next weekend at a local convention, how did it go?

I thought it said you could vote once per day, but I've voted a few more times, and it always says, "Thank you for your vote!" but the count doesn't actually go up...

I love this qualifier.

...particularly since, as Siri notes in Chapter 32 in one of the few moments of the book which admits there's a world outside their local area, there apparently aren't any known jungles elsewhere in the world. You'd think if they were at a latitude where jungles were possible, they would be able to travel as far as people are able to travel, and find other jungles.

Per my post on the previous page, there were at one point 40k Terrismen at the enclave. That many, or some amount less, survived Rebirth, giving us an approximate upper bound of two hundred thousand.

OP updated with the definites. A wrought iron fence I pass will be coated with something, yes? If an allomancer wanted to flake it for the metallic properties, she'd have to peel off the outer layer and then scrape, yes? Which would allow rust in to eventually ruin the whole fence. I would like to hear a better option for zinc, if I can find one.

Thank you... the map you've provided, however, has no scale that I can see, so there's no way to tell how far apart the regions are. The 160 miles is a weirdly rough estimate. In one way, it's a maximum. It's assuming the road is a straight one from Bevalis to T'Telir. Going down a mountain, it could be that a road switching back and forth going downhill and taking ten miles to traverse might only bring you one mile closer as the crow flies. I have absolutely no idea how you'd determine a good approximation of how much of the distance they actually traveled brought them closer to T'Telir. On the other hand, it's also a minimum. Siri's first scene in the carriage is specifically "on the second day of the journey". The next scene is simply labeled, "Days later," than the first. This could mean no more than two days, for a total of four. It could be six days, for a total of eight. It's vague enough that it could even be inexact, and maybe it was just one more day, for a total of three. My assumption on the speed of the carriage itself is also pretty random; I cannot think of an accurate way to determine how far a cart filled with princess guarded by backcountry soldiers going somewhere none of them actually want to go would travel in a day. You have brought up a number of fascinating points I had not previously considered. Thank you for inviting me to think in new and interesting ways! It seems to be that the simplest explanation is just that we have a chilly mountain near a tropical valley; since we already know the first Returned, Returned there, and the Tears of Edgli will only grow there, there must simply be something nearby causing the area to be warmer than it should geographically be. However! Simple explanations aren't always true, least of all in fantasy novels. I think this is DEFINITELY a concern that warrants a question to Mr. Sanderson. I don't think I've got anything else to add to this discussion, but I'll keep my eye out to see what anyone else says! Perhaps I'll be back if a thought occurs to me. (Also, my buddy, a Sharder and a climatologist, gets back home this week and will probably want to weigh in).

What's a good way to find the eight basic metals in real life? Allomantic purity not important. Iron - Anything "cast iron" or "wrought iron", possibly under a protective layer. Steel - Paperclips, screws, nuts, bolts, the world is basically made out of steel. Congratulations, we live in Newcago. Tin - Solder seems to be your best bet. Pewter - Metal action figures Zinc - The core of some pennies Brass - Keys Copper - The outside at least of most pennies Bronze - Several instruments, such as cymbals or the outer layer of some piano/guitar strings. It turns out that most keys are made of at least a kind of brass. I feel like I heard once that paperclips used to be steel. Is that right, does anyone know? (Update: Preliminary research suggests the answer is yes) Is tin foil actually tin? Are pennies really still copper? Is there a way to tell if a "wrought iron" fence is actually iron? Does wrought iron mean some sort of alloy or is it just, as I have always believed, a way of saying how the iron was sculpted into its shape. What are items a person in America would have easy access to that contain the eight basic Allomantic metals?

Hrm... according to Wax, roughly 1/5th of the Originators were the Terrismen, so presumably decent herdsman. However, recall that Vin is sixteen at the start of the first book, and 18 by the end. However many city skaa went to work fields, they have less than two years experience by the World Reborn. Just observations. Frankly, in three hundred years, a lot of things could happen that might have curtailed the population more than we might expect. These are great points to wonder about, and they might be worth a question to Mr. Sanderson. While I don't feel I personally have much more to add to this conversation, I've enjoyed thinking about this topic and what I've learned from the rest of you, and if you've got more to add I look forward to reading it.

First, experiments with Awakening only permanently cost you Breath if you die or if you use them on Lifeless. Second, as stated above, both Vasher and Vivenna are people with enough Breaths to experiment, and their appearance on the street is worthy of note, but not unique. Therefore, there must be at least enough people with enough Breaths to experiment who aren't associated with the Court of Gods for it to be something the average citizen of T'Telir would see rarely, but not never. Finally, the Returned themselves aren't the ones holding the Breaths. In fact, they have just their Divine Breath with a possible variance of 1. Yet, Awakeners travel with the God-King, carrying him around on Awakened ropes. Lightsong has enough Awakeners working for him to Break a Lifeless squirrel. The Court of Gods does have a large population of people who have a lot of Breaths and the job description "Awakener". Why on earth would they stunt research into this? Hallandren is the super-power in the region, due in small part to the strength of their Awakeners. If the government has a near-monopoly on skilled and powerful Awakeners, yet not actual pressing demand on their time (apart from Breaking the squirrel, how many tasks do you think Lightsong actually assigns to his Awakeners? Mercystar? Weatherlove?) why on earth have they decided, "Spend absolutely no time advancing the science of this power we control almost entirely!"?

Yet in modern times, neither Vasher nor Vivenna, both at least at the Second Heightening, Vasher possibly much higher, raise particular note as they go around. There must be enough people at the Second or Third Heightening for it to be merely a curiosity and not outrageous for people to note, like an amazingly nice car. If you're walking the streets of New York City and you see someone drive past in a gorgeous new latest model Ferrari, you'll stare and notice but won't think, "Hey, that's pretty much impossible" like if you saw someone who regularly commuted to work via jetpack. I'll grant you that there could very well be fewer people with enough Breath to experiment, but enough so that for three entire centuries there has been literally not one major advancement? I feel like this kind of scientific stagnation just doesn't happen without a deliberate effort to squash it; everything people have suggested so far would slow the advancement but not stop it completely. In a century, the people of Nalthis went from not knowing Awakening existed to crafting Nightblood, probably the single most powerful object in the Cosmere. (The citation is, admittedly, more of an implication, but a powerful one.) Then, overnight, progress ground to a complete halt. The Wright Brothers flew in Kitty Hawk, and sixty years later Lance Armstrong stepped onto the moon. Can you imagine a circumstance at which that was it? Planes, space craft, no form of aviation whatsoever improved since 1969? No larger planes, no unmanned drones, no stealth bombers, no improved satellites, no international space station. If the top five scientists in aviation had dropped dead in 1970 and the entire Air Force budget for every nation on the planet got slashed to 10%, do you think humans would spend the next hundred and eighty years without a single major improvement in aviation?

...But seriously, in 300 years there hasn't been another Faraday? One hasn't been born, despite the fact that Nalthis got five in a century? And we're not talking about an apparent drop in research. We're talking zero apparent advancement. Those five people you named did a lot to advance science, but they aren't 100% of the science we have in our world.

Can we assume that after the first century or so, once the Basin was pretty well filled, the population explosion tapered off? Or that for the first decade or so, various factors meant people weren't reproducing quite as quickly as we thought? Are there any factors we haven't considered which could make for a higher mortality rate? (People wouldn't be used, for example, to things like sunstroke.)

Most of this is according to Chapter 32. Vo was the first Returned six hundred years ago. I wonder how he died. Awakening was only discovered four hundred years ago. Does this mean that no Returned lived longer than a week for two hundred years? Or do they not consider simply trading Breaths to be Awakening? The Manywar was 300 years ago. That's one century after Awakening was first discovered. In a hundred years, they went from no knowledge of Awakening to one-Breath Lifeless and Nightblood. In the three hundred years since, even with four of the Scholars still alive, there do not seem to have been any notable advancements in the art. What? For some reason, I had been under the impression that along with the Five Visions, Vo taught about Awakening, but I was clearly wrong. So then how did people learn? Did someone just finally get to a Heightening high enough that Awakening became somewhat instinctive? Was it the Royal Family of Hanald, whose Royal Locks apparently operate under a similar principle? Did one of them get enough Breath and just decide one day to use what he or she knew about controlling his or her own hair to see if he or she could get a rope to Grab Things? Intent being as important as it is, it would have to be a specific intent. I can't really believe a scenario where someone, not knowing that Awakening exists, just sorta happens to be attacked by someone, picks up a rope, verbally Commands the rope out loud to help him, and then flings the rope at his attacker. That just seems unlikely in the absolute extreme. If I'm being attacked by someone, I can totally see picking up random objects and throwing them at the person, I just don't buy that under any circumstance would it occur to me to issue those random objects orders. So why not? Mistborn spoilers: Even assuming that the Court of Gods especially cared about stunting the advancement of BioChroma, which doesn't seem hugely likely since they're on top of the world and want to remain that way and considering the size of their Lifeless army they don't seem at all invested in not being as powerful as possible, could they manage it? It is a powerful theocracy, but they do not seem to have quite as total control over their population as the example above. I suppose the case can be made that they have more control specifically over things to do with Breath and Awakening. Does this pass the smell test to people? Can anyone provide me with concrete examples from the text (or from WoB) that shows that a) the Hallandren government had any interest in actively stunting the study of BioChroma, even for themselves, and 2) they actually had the capacity to stunt study of BioChroma across their entire country? I am willing to accept that if places outside the valley have advanced the art, it's simply unknown yet in the microcosm of the valley which is the only glimpse we've had onto Nalthis.