Oudeis

Well, it will come down to a decision on your part balancing speed/simplicity with accuracy, limited by whatever mechanism you've got for constructing a poll. The very very fastest and simplest is just to ask everyone to pick their favorite metal of the 9 available, and print the two that win. Pretty low accuracy. The most accurate... would be something insane, and would require at least four polls, prolly six. It would also be a long list of heuristics dependent upon how many metals get above a certain percentage of the vote in the first poll, as well as a few other factors. Though granted we are having a debate on the subject, which increases the accuracy by a lot. And the fact that I'll hopefully be able to offer voting advice to anyone who wants it; it is possible to be a more informed voter and to know exactly how to cast your vote to get the outcome you truly want. My actual suggestion will be quick (one single poll) and pretty simple, without sacrificing much in the way of accuracy. Take one massive poll and let everyone pick two metals. The only people who would be missing out are people who feel very strongly about one metal and don't really care about what the second one is. The top two metals get chosen. This will still suffer from a degree of inaccuracy, but it won't sacrifice too very much, and has the beauty of a mostly simple poll. If it's impossible to have a poll with up to two options, you could always release a poll with all 55 possible combinations as the options... Am I doing that math right? That would be a little bit ponderous for the poll-takers but not impossibly so. Just my two cents.

How will the votes go if we reach $35K? Will everyone just pick their favorite and the top two become the new dice? Does everyone get two votes? Will there be two separate polls, we vote once, pick one, then vote again from all runners up? There seems to be a lot of people who want "electrum and lerasium" and a smaller number of people who want "malatium and something else." I'm afraid that depending on how we vote, the electrum/lerasium people's vote might get split, and they'll come in 2nd and 3rd place while the smaller group of people all voting malatium end up as a vocal minority. Voting is complicated. Yes, I am a politics wonk. The sad fact is, unless there are only two options and one winner, there are very few ways to hold a vote that will be both simple and an accurate reflection of what people really want. You'd think it would be simple; it really, really isn't. Depending on how the votes will end up being counted, I might start a campaign to get people to vote certain ways to ensure the outcome they actually want.

As I've shown in other threads and will link to when i get to my home computer, Kaladin's fighting skill clearly is supernatural in nature. There are associated phenomena which make it clear that it is beyond the natural. Since we now know it isn't part of his Nahel bond, despite Syl very nearly flat out saying it is, I wonder what the real explanation is. Second, as has been brought up, Rosharan diseases as a whole aren't terribly virulent because it's just not fertile ground for them. The "cold" brought over is like unleashing a thunderclast on a herd of sheep. Third, you seem to be assuming that the cold was brought intentionally as a weapon. I personally suspect someone simply worldhopped with the sniffles and sneezed in the Purelake without realizing the import of what he was doing.

You misunderstood, I realize I was a bit unclear. I meant that if we get electrum, the dice will be "several normal base metals with all of their partners, also one God Metal [Atium]." Honestly, what I'd select for the second one I'm unsure... Lerasium seems obvious, then every metal we have would be a pair. Someone mentioned we could get Aluminum, as it makes an appearance in the first book. Kurk made the good point that there are reasons to put malatium on the back burner. For personal reasons I'd lean towards duralumin, since I'm currently playing a duralumin Compounder in a MAG game so it would be nice to roll my actual power, but that game's not going great so maybe not. Honestly I kind of like the idea of voting correctly which is sorta why I'm hoping to see how most people are voting, and if I agree with the sentiment joining in, so whatever we get I can say, "I helped!" Which is silly, I know, but it's just some dice for a game.

We already know that Windrunners have... what's the actual quote? an "unusually large number"? and "atypical amount"? of Squires. But this says "Strength of Squires." Does he simply mean that Kaladin himself is "strong" enough to host many Squires? Or does it mean that not only does he have many, but they are individually more powerful than most Squires are?

If we make $30K, does anyone have any thoughts on how they think they're going to vote for the 11th Metal Die? Personally, I'm leaning towards Electrum, so that all normal metals would be matched pairs, and then Atium. We could go Lerasium because then we'd have both God Metals, but then Gold would be dancing without a partner. Malatium would make a situationally comic choice, 11th Metal, 11th Die. Thoughts?

Ah, you espouse the Belinda Carlisle theory.

They clearly do get sick, sometimes... Renarin's "issue" is clearly more than as much stormlight as you get from a lamp can heal, I would imagine. If you cut off someone's head, no amount of stormlight will simply heal it. I never meant to imply that I think stormlight heals instantly, hence me pointing out that it's infinitesimal. It wouldn't even seal a papercut over, but maybe if you're surrounded by lamps for a while, it'll heal in three days instead of four. And something big, like poor eyesight or a terminal illness or a grievous wound is simply too much for any duration of such light treatment to aid. Also, remember that there were no stormlight lanterns in the slave wagons. Maybe that's why people suddenly got sick. This would mean that rich people, who tend more frequently to have sphere lamps, would actually gain the benefit more frequently than poor people who have to make do with candles.

From where do we know that Leras was once selfish? Also, the actions he took were pretty harshly in contrast to the Intent of "Preservation" so... if he changed, I doubt it was purely through the principle of Intent. For my question: Does your spiritweb need to have a connection to Roshar for you to bond a Shardblade? EDIT: I believe we've had it confirmed that Soulcasting is unique among Surges in that even if you're a Surgebinder, you need stormlight from a gem of the appropriate color in order to soulcast an Essence. What would you Soulcast if you, like Kaladin, drew Stormlight in directly from the storm, not from a gemstone?

...Why?

Why are you so surprised?

Your question pre-supposes that all cognitive shadows are the same. What if "Cognitive shadow" is analogous to the phrase, "work of art"? What does a "work of art" look like in the cognitive realm? Well, presumably both a statue and a painting would be represented by a glass bead. What about a photo of the painting? Is it a new glass bead, or an extension of the first one? What about a play? Is there a glass bead as its being performed? Is it just the glass beads for the stage, the performers, the lighting? Would they be how the "play" is represented in the cognitive realm? If no one is currently performing the play, does it no longer exist? What about a song? Is it in the singer's glass bead? Does it get its own, despite having no physical substance? Does it reflect the emotions and memories that the song invokes? Is it just the glass bead of the sheet music? My point is, you may wish to ask more general questions first to understand what a cognitive shadow is before you're able to ask something like "what does a cognitive shadow look like in the cognitive realm". As my friend told me the other day, when you're trying to reconstruct a skeleton, you start with the big bones. We know a few different things about cognitive shadows and most of them confuse us, perhaps because there's an underlying assumption that all cognitive shadows are the same, when they might be very, very different things which are alike in fewer ways than we realize.

The quote is interesting... it implies that people on Roshar rarely get sick, because Investiture is so high. Combining this with the Interlude from Words of Radiance which says that the listeners grow rockbuds superfast by shining stormlight on them... does it make you healthier just to have stormlight shine on you? Like as though you were infusing an infintesimally small bit of Stormlight? Enough maybe that spending all day illuminated by spheres might be just enough to keep you healthier on average than people from other Shardworlds?

Is each Order better at one Surge than the other?

I know the first unlock is $30K, but what's the level for the second? ...also not to be that guy but you saw the typo in your email, yes? 100 instead of 1000?

Mistborn From that, we can presume that since Aons were apparently named after Aona, and the Skaze were named after Skai, that the Arelish people who found Elantris and settled in that land learned of the human name of the shard Devotion at some point. This doesn't necessarily mean she hadn't yet been shattered by then; it's possible books or carvings left in Elantris named her.

Sorry, I didn't post or quote it here because Moogle already had in this Thread. Moogle... first of all, I assume you ask out of further academic interest, since you cannot possibly be contending that the latest WoB is wrong. Second, the short, semi-copout answer. We don't know. There is a ton we don't know about what Rashek did in those few minutes or why he did it. Why did he pick ash, instead of a few other options which might have worked to cool the planet? Why did he turn feruchemists specifically into mistwraiths instead of one of a dozen other ways he could grant his buddies immortality in exchange for their power. Why did he offer immortality instead of some other prize? Maybe one day we'll learn, but maybe we won't. Third, a few thoughts. To begin, Sazed could have been giving a range rather than an exact amount. He was as powerful as the original allomancers. Maybe he was a touch more powerful. Maybe he was third most powerful of them all. The essential point he was trying to make was the difference between Mistborn-of-old and Mistborn-of-today; just as there's a difference between how strong Mistborn are today (Vin was stronger than Kelsier, and so on) there were likely differences between how powerful Mistborn were at the dawn of the Final Empire, but as a whole you can point to an average of the powers of present day and an average of the powers of the past and compare them, and you're not "wrong" just because you don't spend an additional paragraph explaining that your words aren't meant to be taken as an admission that every original Mistborn was at the exact same power level to within an iota. As another point, either the beads were not all the same mass, in which case there was a range of powers, or they were all the exact same mass, in which case I turn the question on it's head. Why would Leras have made all the beads at exactly that level of power? For that matter, why would he make them even all roughly the same mass? Shouldn't there have been big nuggets and small? Yet clearly he did make beads of all roughly the same mass. Why? Perhaps there is a reason and we just don't see it. Maybe a Mistborn much more powerful than that was at dangerous levels of Investiture. Maybe that much power had hazards that aren't apparent to those of us who have never seen someone that much stronger. Maybe Leras simply wanted them capped at a certain amount, and when Rashek (Who, as a Terrisman, worshipped Terr at the time) used the power and felt its history, he decided to obey his God's wishes and keep his powers at not much more than the preset limit. Or maybe not; maybe he did it for one of a dozen other reasons

Technically Sazed never says, "Rashek ate a bead". He just says Rashek was as powerful as the original allomancers. If Rashek simply used the power of the well to make himself one full bead of Lerasium's worth of Mistborn, there's no contradiction in the epigraph.

Words of Radiance.

He said that strong Investiture meant "theoretically possible." To me, that basically says that simply "a lot of Investiture" will never be enough, there's another element we're missing. If he were saying that a high amount of Investiture is all you need, that would not be "theoretically possible". I think he's admitting that his previous W's-o-B were contradictory, not that we now need to find a way to justify how they're all technically, grammatically true. I'd still love to know how lerasium is used feruchemically, and I see no reason he wouldn't have taken a bead if it was useful (and it's a godmetal so how could it not be?) but I personally would not use any of these WoB as evidence one way or another on that. Do we know that "allomancers can use their power" is the same as "influence of a Shard"? Maybe Mr. Sanderson was answering the question, "What can Shards choose to influence," but there's no reason an Allomancer can't draw on Preservation's power from another planet. Like a reservoir only services a certain area, but it can have an aqueduct bringing its water to a specific location. I'm just saying, I don't know that we've ever heard for sure he's answering the questiong you seem to think we're asking.

Is the metal of a fabrial Invested enough to resist steelpushes?

More thoughts... Elend is described as more powerful, because he can add more force to his Steelpushes than others can. Yet... is that really consistent? The model doesn't actually make a ton of sense. Vin can Push on a single coin. She can Push on a dozen coins. From what we've seen, there's no reason to suspect that when she pushes on dozens of coins, that each individual coin is only receiving 1/20 the force of Pushing on a single coin. Wax, braced by his iron feruchemy, is able to add enough force to an entire structure (granted, at pressure points, but still) to make the whole thing collapse. This doesn't fully jive with what Breeze tells us about Soothing and Rioting. He seems to imply that power is in the number of people you can Soothe or Riot, not in how strongly you can affect the emotions; in fact, a lighter touch is usually much preferred. (I admit that is less certain/obvious than the Steel example.) So... someone stronger at Steel is someone who can put more force into any single Push. Regardless, there's nothing to stop you from pushing on a score of coins as easily as one. Does pushing 20 coins make steel run out 20 times as fast? Does steel burn faster when you're actually pushing instead of just passively observing lines?

Clearly, it's (mistborn spoilers)

I always thought the beings Kaladin saw were chasmfiends.

Did Amaram understand Taln while Shallan was hiding in the room? Taln had what was prolly his honorblade, and he could be understood by the guards. Then he lost it and Elhokar could barely make out a few words. Then a Surgebinder was able to understand him. Then the guy on the cart with Hoid seems to understand him and claims he's been repeating those words since Kholinar. I don't understand any of it.