Oudeis

Okay, while he comes TANTALIZINGLY CLOSE three or four times to giving us a "it is this many day's journey" from Bevalis to T'Telir, he never actually flat-out says. Which is unfortunate. However, in Siri's trip, she comments at one point that it's been "two days", and at another point it is "days later", so at least four days, and at that point they are not even yet into the jungle. Assuming that there is a well-traveled and -maintained road from Bevalis to T'Telir, which as the capitals of two major Kingdoms in the area I feel isn't too great a stretch, according to this admittedly unscientific citation, it is at minimum 160 miles from Bevalis to the edge of the jungle. Eco: Do you happen to have numbers on how, exactly, far it is from the jungles of Bhutan to the temperate regions of Assam? I have attempted to google and eyeball on a map but unfortunately spatial reasoning is not one of my primary skills. Nevertheless, 160 miles does seem like an acceptable distance, just judging from the center of Bhutan to the center of Assam, which according to google maps and the route I chose is just about that far.

Per Chapter 32, Vo was Returned 600 years ago (300 years before the Manywar). Yet I had thought Vo taught people how to Awaken; in fact Awakening was only invented 200 years AFTER Vo. Also, I now need to learn Photoshop so I can take a poster for Captain America: The First Avengers and change the words to Vo: The First Returned. EDIT: Chapter 32 is proving very useful... they do specifically note that the Court of Gods took control of Hallandren at the end of the Manywar, and that it was 300 years ago.

I'm going to have to re-read but I'm almost certain Vasher is only 300 or so... where are you getting your number from? EDIT: Epilogue. Vivenna, referring to Vasher. "He'd been alive for over three hundred years." Granted, 900 years is more than 300. Upon what are you basing your idea that the Manywar was 800 years ago? EDIT AGAIN: Per Hoid in chapter 32, Vo, the First Returned, and the founding of Hallandren, happened 300 years before the Manywar. So, Hallandren in any form has only existed for six centuries. I honestly don't know if that's long enough for it to be unusual to lack a major earthquake. Also, a few other things to consider. The jungle itself is very usual, not necessarily naturally tropical. Being surrounded by mountains and next to an inland sea, not just next to one mountain, could affect the climate greatly. It's also been speculated that the warmth might come about as a part of interaction with Endowment; recall that this is also the location where the first man ever Returned. There's clearly something unique about this valley, which may or may not extend to an artificial climate. Alternately, perhaps something about the local Investiture keeps a place that should be tectonically active stable. I've long wondered where the actual power for Awakening comes from; perhaps it feeds off the latent potential energy of massive underground tectonics? It's possible the Hallandren, with their Awakening, is keeping the whole region safe. One last edit is upcoming, as I try to determine exactly how close Hallandren is to mountainous Idris.

How frequent would you expect a "devastasting earthquake"? Cuz recall, Vo only landed like 500 years ago, didn't he? So tectonically speaking, there hasn't been a Hallandren very long.

Have Gemmel and Zane ever met?

Fruits are an odd sticking point... we have WoB that fruits no longer exist. Specifically, someone asked if there was ketchup, and he said no, because tomatoes are a fruit and need flowers, and flowers don't exist. I believe he has since clarified that anything in the book someone refers to as a "fruit" isn't what we on earth would call a fruit. I regret I do not have the W's-o-B at hand just at the moment but I will try to find them...

Good luck; I also got the network error but I worked through it. I checked and the vote counter ticked up. If you click quickly on "vote now" before the error has a chance to process you can jumpstart the connection. At least, if it's the same error I was running into.

That's one thing I've been wondering about for a while. Did Rashek change a whole planets worth of plants and animals to survive within the Final Empire? Did Sazed return them all? Did he create them anew in the World Reborn? Was the knowledge of how to do so contained in his metalminds? Did he just try to get close enough? Found a picture of a cheetah and a description of its abilities, put the biological mechanics together to mimic that decription and wrapped it in the right kind of fur? I have a short story I wrote once set in the World Reborn; a chef in Elendel has read through almost every recipe book in the Words of Founding, searched the known world for a variety of plants and animals, and is trying to recreate the cuisines of the forgotten world. With limited success but very interesting results.

I think it's safe to say we aren't.

I mean, sure, if we get into the specifics of how people began propagating, but I think we're keeping it detached and clinical enough as it is. Rat is right; with enormous food stores, fertile fields, and a literal entire planet free to colonize, not to mention plans for an enormous city able to hold the entire current known-world population a dozen times over handed to you by a God, I suspect there would have been a population explosion. Also, The Lord Mistborn himself set a high bar.

@Coma and I suppose also everyone: Recall that a LOT of Divine Intervention was going on here. This was literally a world on the actual brink of cracking open like an egg and turning into dust in space due to the machinations of a God before one man with the power of two Gods showed up and fixed everything at more-or-less literally the last minute. So there are factors to consider as we compare it to near-extinction level events on Earth.

My brain refuses to accept these numbers as anything other than a statistic. When I try to imagine it being related to an actual population, I start to seize. And cry. Sidenote: It's possible the whole 99.8% didn't die all in that one afternoon. Remember Ruin had been killing entire villages at a time with earthquakes and eruptions. Not sure what a reasonable estimate would be of how many he was able to take down, or if it's enough to impact the percentage very much.

Truthwatchers and Edgedancers wanted better horses; over the course of generations several skilled in a specific use of Progression manipulated horses in utero to make them smarter, stronger, faster, bigger.

...and a second to give him the upvote you intended to give him.

I'm a little confused by your math... if the population of the Final Empire really did drop from 100 million to 750 thousand, you seem to be saying that this means 25% of the population died. That's the number if it had gone from 1 million to 750 thousand. The actual percentage is that 99.25% of the population died. Also: Numbers. There were, at most, 40K Terrismen at the enclave that survived the Rebirth of the world. Wax says that Terrismen made up approximately 1/5th of the Originators. This gives us an estimated 200,000 Originators.

"Can Shardholders bear mortal(ish) children" is one of the first questions on my personal list. I'm still working on a way to phrase it that will avoid ambiguous answers. Frankly, direct shardic intervention seems capable of just about anything, so on balance I would assume the default answer is yes, especially in the case of the Shard meant to cultivate things. I suppose it's possible Shshshsh's identity isn't actually important, but at this point it's been built up so much that "oh she's just some nameless pretty foreigner" feels like it would be a let-down.

It isn't what I'm suggesting. That was an example. I'm saying, since we don't have the second half of the sentence, there could be any number of qualifiers he was going to add. Basically, "she's the most powerful-" on Roshar, unqualified, more-or-less has to mean Cultivation. There's no "she" who can be considered more powerful on the planet by any metric. This is the reason for my pet theory. I was simply saying, it's entirely possible that the rest of the sentence would have disqualified Cultivation, which is why the theory isn't at all solid. Also, we have no idea what manner of abilities the other Heralds possess. Perhaps there is some skill Shallash could use to change her own appearance, and to bear children matching her persona. With the tiny, tiny little bit we know about Heralds, it cannot actually be ruled out. Note: I don't personally think it was Shallash, though from he phrasing of Zahel's sentence I'm not ruling out a Herald.

From your profile picture, AMAZING Terris cosplay. Thank you, everyone, for the advice!

There is a scene where Zahel tells Kaladin, of Renarin, "That boy is the son of the most powerful-" and is then cut off. If he simply meant Dalinar, there's not actually a reason, narratively, for that sentence to have been cut off. There's nothing surprising about Dalinar being powerful, and any number of ways that sentence could have ended to mean his father. Now, it could just have been cut off to leave a false trail, or just to troll us. Or it could be there was a qualifier coming. "The most powerful woman... born this century," or something else that would preclude it being an actual Shard. Nevertheless, I have for some time now, and plan to continue doing so, sit here quietly and wait for any hints in the third books to confirm or deny this little pet theory.

Huh. My cousin lives on a lake that has intermittent but ENORMOUS amounts of fog. I had planned to go there someday and roll the dice on a misty morning, but if that fails, he also has an enormous backyard and a firepit. This could work... The costume is almost entirely done. I am not going to hem every tassel, so I just need to go over them all one-by-one and trim off all the loose threads. Also, I have a clear vial (too large, but what are you gonna do) for my mistborn vial. I found that coarse ground pepper makes for excellent flakes of a variety of good colors and shades, with two drawbacks. They obviously look non-metallic, but more importantly something in pepper leeches into the water of the vial and stains it amber. I could just claim that it's in whiskey like Wax's, rather than the standard alcohol solution. Surely someone in the Final Empire also decided to use better quality spirits. Has anyone here experimented with other sediments to make home-made Misting vials? I would value your input. I could get actual metal shavings somehow, but it seems like a hassle to get enough different types, and I'd like something I actually could swallow in a pinch if the moment called for it (I'm not sanguine on trusting swallowing actual shavings of metal). My Sharder friend will be back in town in about a week and I'm hoping he'll be willing to do a photoshoot with me. I'm certain other friends of mine who aren't quite as devoted would be willing to help, but I'd like the input of a real Sharder. I'll post some pics, if I'm not being too forward, in about a week, if people have advice. There's also a very small local convention, just starting this year, for sci-fi and fantasy literature. This costume turned out well enough, I'm actually considering entering my first cosplay contest.

Thank you!

I'm looking into things that look like they are high up even if they aren't. Like, maybe on someone's roof there's a ledge thing a few feet above the ground, so I can crouch on the edge of that and if the angle is shot the right way it'll look like I'm crouching over a void instead of a pile of pillows. I don't think I'm committed enough to buy/rent a fog machine for a single photoshoot.

...d'oh.

Just about done with my mistcloak. Trying to think of how to do a basic photo shoot. I live in an urban setting and in my ten years in this city I've seen fog maybe twice, so not a viable option. Apart from mist, any ideas people might have on how to do a decent shot? I'm prolly just gonna end up doing it in my house and ignore the anachronistic background, since I don't think I can easily replicate any natural Mistborn setting. No ballrooms, no towering mansions, no carriages, no spikeways I can fly 20 feet over...

Keep in mind, it's also been said that a skilled Seeker could detect feruchemy; despite this, with a thousand years of research and excellent motivation, slavishly devoted Seekers (the Inquisitors), many with double Bronze, were never able to do it. In short, it prolly is possible to use Bronze to sense other forms of Investiture. It will absolutely not be easy, and I suggest it's prolly not something you can just "figure out" via trial and error. On the other hand, it's possible you'd be able to find any Shardpool or any direct manifestation of a Shard with Bronze; perhaps something that powerful is just so loud that even without training, you can sense it. Or, contrariwise, maybe Ruin being Invested in Scadrial is what allows a Scadrian Investiture to sense him; other Shards might not be quite as easy.