Fanghur Rahl

^^^ this.

I dunno about a chull, but we do know that Honor’s Perpendicularity moves, and we also know that at one point Lift sees Hoid cheerfully jump into a greatshell’s mouth... greatshells are mobile, Honor’s Perpendicularity is mobile... mind = blown!

I totally just lol’d at that WOB!

Well, technically according to Relativity FTL travel (at least directly) and time travel to the past are the same thing, so clearly he isn’t completely abiding by relativity if he’s gonna have true FTL. Anyway, thanks for the info.

I’m just curious, is there any actual evidence in support of the idea that Hoid is able to travel through time as opposed to merely being immortal? I’ve heard several times that Hoid is speculated to be a time traveler, and the fact that his character has evolved into something clearly at least superficially based on the Doctor or another Time Lord would seem to give it plausibility, but is there any actual canonical evidence for or against the idea? Off the top of my head the only thing that might possibly be construed as evidence for it is that in Words of Radiance when Hoid is posing as the coachman, when Shallan recognizes him and thanks and hugs him for his helping her a couple years previously, he seems entirely baffled as to who she is. Almost like he hadn’t yet done it from his timeline. Obviously there are many other interpretations of this, but regardless, is the whole ‘Hoid is a Time Lord’ thing purely a matter of speculation at this point, or has Brandon actually hinted that it might have some validity to it beyond him being based at least superficially on the Doctor?

I understand that Calderis, I’m just saying that regardless of whether that truly is why she makes her avatars or not, that would seriously be an almost Dr. Evil-tier rationalization for avoiding her oath. Hiring someone to kill someone for you still makes you a murderer if they succeed. Likewise, creating an avatar to mess with the other Shards still counts as you interfering with them, at least by literally any meaningful and reasonable sense, since the avatar would effectively just be your tool for doing it.

@Calderis are you saying that you think Bavadin’s reasoning is seriously along the lines of “Gee, I swore I wouldn’t interfere with other Shards, so I guess I’ll deliberately create all these avatars for the purpose of interfering with other Shards!”? There is no judge on the planet who would rule that that wouldn’t be a gross violation of the deal. Plus, the Avatars would all presumably be extensions of Autonomy’s own mind, so they wouldn’t truly be ‘separate’, but rather different agents of a larger collective hive mind.

I tend to agree with @Leyrann. It is very difficult to see how this view of Autonomy can be internally consistent without a considerable amount of contriving. If nothing else, it certainly seems quite convoluted when compared to literally every other Shard we know of. And touché, I didn’t know that was how Allomancy worked.

But they’re still ultimately using Autonomy’s Investiture to power their magic though is my point. The only difference is how it’s done. On Scadrial, Preservation’s Investiture is infused in the various metals, and when Allomancers ‘burn’ the metal, they absorb that Investiture. Similarly, on Taldain Autonomy’s Investiture is infused in the sand, which the Sandmasters absorb at a cost of the moisture in their bodies as you said. Sure the two systems are distinct, but my point is that ultimately the power still comes directly from the respective Shards. They’re both what TVTropes would identify as ‘force magic’. When I think of a magic system like you describe, something not directly powered by a Shard, I think of how magic works in the Inheritance Cycle, where the energy needed to do magic is extracted directly from the magic user’s body rather than (at least usually) from some external source.

That seems like a big stretch to me. I mean the only magic system we’ve really seen so far in which people actually do access the Investiture directly is AonDor and the other magic systems of Sel, and even then only the full Elantrians and only arguably. In Allomancy, Feruchemy, Haemolurgy, Surgebinding, and Awakening, the actual source of the power used to fuel the magic is external (or at least independent of) to the user. Metal in Allomancy, Stormlight in Surgebinding, Endowment’s breath in Awakening. If anything, the systems associated with Autonomy seem like the rule not the exception. I mean in Sandmastery, the sand effectively plays the equivalent role as metal does in Allomancy.

But like I said, that is not what ‘self-directed’ means, or at least that isn’t what Brandon was referring to in the WOB I’ve seen commonly cited in support of this argument. In the case of Autonomy, ‘self-directed’ would mean preserving/promoting her own autonomy (which she certainly does, at least if we stipulate that all her avatars are still ‘her’), it wouldn’t mean arbitrarily exempting herself from her opposition of violating others’ autonomy. This may seem like nitpicking, but these are two very different things. I’m not necessarily saying that you’re wrong here, only that we can’t conclude that you’re correct merely by citing Brandon’s claim that intents aren’t self-directed in the sense of being directed at oneself (Ruin doesn’t need to destroy itself, Odium needn’t hate himself, etc.). Because like I said, this is an apples and oranges distinction.

So how does the concept of ‘measures’ fit into it? The way I heard it described by physicists Alan Guth, Max Tegmark, and Sean Carroll, many physicists now think that a multiverse exists, either in the sense of one spacetime that is spatially infinite or the sense of a potentially infinite ‘sea’ of discrete spacetimes (or both). But they said that the problem with it is that in either case predictions are difficult because in an infinite universe, anything physically possible, regardless of how unlikely it is, will occur an infinite number of times, and we don’t know how to meaningfully talk about one thing being any more ‘likely’ than another in this framework. And they said we currently lack the correct ‘measure’ to accurately make useful predictions based on it. Is this just something completely unrelated to ‘infinity’ in the context of this discussion? Or are you just using different terminology? Because that’s why I previously was under the impression that whether one infinity is ‘larger’ than another just depends on the parameters you choose to analyze it by. I’m guessing based on what you said that I’ve misunderstood their point?

Fair enough. Like I said, my university education was biotechnology and microbiology not advanced calculus, so I’ll take your word for it, though I still question how much realworld (or even fictional world) applicability the concept actually has though.

@Calderis I’m curious, what exactly do you mean by ‘self-directed in this context? Because to me, ‘self-directed’ means applying the intent to the Shard itself, that is, Ruin doesn’t have to destroy itself, Preservation doesn’t have to preserve itself, Odium isn’t driven to hate itself, and in Autonomy’s case, she doesn’t need to preserve her own autonomy. But you seem to be using the term to mean something very different with respect to Autonomy, and I think that may be why you and I are always talking past each other on this particular issue, because I completely agree that shardic intents aren’t self-directed in the sense of Ruin and Preservation and Odium, but I don’t think I do with respect to how you seem to be defining it with regards to Autonomy, and I think it may be a misapplication of the term.

Well it certainly seemed to me that the Spren were terrified of them for that reason, though admittedly that’s just my opinion.

I know it’s not self-directed, I never said it was. It’s directed in this case TO the humans. It’s their autonomy that she’s violating, not her own. Though admittedly she’s arguably doing that as well, but that’s not my point here.

Well for starters the fact that the Fused and Voidspren are invading Shadesmar and doing precisely that, albeit at this point not indiscriminately, though it’s only a matter of time. Remember that while Kaladin and the others were in the Spren city it was strongly implied that the Fused had begun killing?

The ‘everyone except her’ part is what makes the entire thing fall apart. It’s a textbook special pleading fallacy of reasoning.

Are you saying you think it would be in any way a surprise to any Spren that Odium would want to destroy them as well?

Agreed. I’ve said before that ‘Autonomy’ seems to in many ways be acting much more like I would expect Dominion to act.

That’s exactly why I very much hope that Harmony somehow acquires Cultivation as well; it certainly fits his personality much better than the other two. That aside though, I agree, Cultivation may be kind of uncaring, but she isn’t overtly meddling in the affairs of other worlds, at least not yet. Whoever Trell is, and I still can’t help but suspect that Autonomy is being set up as a red herring, it certainly isn’t Cultivation. Part of me wonders whether Brandon at some point hyper-covertly identified one of the remaining Shards in either a WOB or one of his books, and Trell is actually that Shard. Then technically it would be a Shard we ‘know’.

I still say that ‘Jealousy’ is probably one of the remaining six. Though I agree that a terror Shard would be awesome too if done correctly; it’s Shardworld would doubtless be something straight out of Lovecraft, although arguably Threnody already is that.

Look, all I’m saying is that given that if Odium wins he will in all probability exterminate ALL Spren that are of Honor and Cultivation (he pretty much says as much to Dalinar), the fact that Spark thinks it’s a good idea to side with Odium is just stupid, especially considering that as I’ve said a few times now Odium is arguably at least indirectly responsible for the ‘deaths’ of Spark’s friends while the Radiants were just trying to do the right thing for all of Roshar, the Spren included. I just really hope there’s more to the Ashspren’s betrayal than a misguided desire for revenge against people who didn’t even do anything to wrong them. If those Radiants were somehow still alive, then alright, I could maybe see how their actions might be considered if not reasonable than at least understandable, but they aren’t, they’ve been dead for 2500 years.

I guess. The parallel is definitely there though; none of it would have happened if Odium hadn’t come to Roshar and effectively declared war on it. If nothing else, it should be an ‘enemy of my enemy’ situation. If not for him, there wouldn’t have needed to be Radiants in the first place.

Because they’re already long dead and buried. That logic is basically equivalent to wanting to kill every dog of every breed on the planet because a rabid pit bull killed your child. It’s extremem difficult to write that kind of character well, because like I said, there is nothing at all rational about it given even a modicum of thought. Unless Ashspren just aren’t as intelligent as other sapient Spren are. And I’m confused. Didn’t Ba-Ado-Mishram cause the false Desolation just after the Heralds abandoned the Oathpact? Am I completely misremembering what was said about it?