Oltux72

No. She would not. She would have slaughtered every single Alethi. The battle on the Shattered Plains was a war of attrition about gem hearts. They are a source of food. A captured Alethi, however, has to be fed and guarded. The guards have to be fed and are missing on the front lines. Worse, you now have Alethi who know where your bases are and the way to them. If you take a few prisoners, they are for intelligence and you hand them over for destructive questioning. To the Parshendi the only good Alethi soldiers on the Shattered Plains are the dead ones. And the Alethi are not stupid. They know that.. Taking an army prisoners wouldn't get her peace. Hence you better strike as hard a blow as you can.

It will get faster. There is no technical reason you could not add a turbine engine to a craft lifted by weight reduction. In fact leaving out the wings will reduce drag.

He would point out to the enemy that these people are important. The Fused have highly mobile forces. Such a resettlement would be a dreadful mistake as he cannot let himself be tied down defending that territory and his squires cease to be Surgebinders when he is gone. At the risk of repeating myself, the KRs need to establish a project for dealing with the families of members. Them being in occupied lands is a huge security risk in terms of giving the enemy hostages. Not every Radiant will be willing to change his or her name and never visit home again. That is one of the likely functions of Urithiru.

Yes, but he'd enter a transsonic regime and experience extreme buffeting. A human body is definitely not made for breaking the sound barrier at sea level. Technically he is in free fall. He should not feel acceleration (safe from friction) at all.

Well, no. If you ask for terms, your opponent will assume that you are exhausted. Any chance of him considering the costs too high and withdrawing is lost. Yes. In fact she should have offered deserting bridgemen sanctuary. Yet, this is unlikely to work in the end. The war is economically advantageous to the Alethi. They won't give up. And then? Dalinar is not the king. It is not his to grant mild terms. Even if he can get Elhokar to agree to them, he cannot publically forgo fulfilling the oath of vengeance. Elhokar has to keep face in front of the High Princes. I am sorry, unleashing the Everstorm was in the Listeners' interest at that point. They should have picked it in full knowledge of the consequences.

And then? Give the fate of the Singer people into the hands of the Alethi? Would they keep political independance? If not what would prevent the Alethi from enslaving the rest of their species? What would happen if they did not allow young Singers out into the Highstorm?

Except Bronze. It cannot be hidden fro other Seekers at all.

Using Lift is dangerous. She has peculiar abilities being cursed and booned. That may extinguish the resonance.

Possibly an enhanced sense of balance is the Edgedancer resonance.

Well, then they should have sent the assassin a few weeks later. Gavilar surely had enemies. There would have been multiple suspects. But this was a stupid thing to do. What reason did they have to think that the next king would not pursue Gavilar's plans? They had no idea where the spheres would end up. They screwed up in a major way. They should have negotiated and stalled.

It seems to me that many see Venli as a villain in the Frankenstein mold. I wonder why, or in other words, what else could she have done or proposed? Let me concentrate on the late war, close to the battle at Narak. Surrender Fight to the death Introducing Forms of Power Flee Now let me look at these options, though not in that order Flee A group of civilians cannot outmarch the Alethi armies. That would have meant sacrificing a large group as a delaying force. And after that a weakened, homeless Listener tribe with little supplies would have found itself in a wilderness. Likely they would have eventually been found only to face another assault in a much weakened state. Fight to the death Well, it is fatal. They would have lost. Surrender To the Blackthorn and the man whose father you killed? Who has sworn a pact of vengeance? To a man who burned a human city to the ground? To people who hold your species in slavery? Introducing Forms of Power Yes, I will admit it. Venli did the right thing. She had no other choice. Eshonai, though she was personally brave and clever, was a failure as a strategist. She just looked on as her people were slowly bled white. It seems to me that the Listeners doomed themselves as they murdered Gavilar and Eshonai bears a part of the blame for that, while Venli did basically the right thing. Though in execution they should have used a part of their forces to evacuated the civilians and the Stormform should have moved further away to force the Alethi to first attack them or face getting between two groups.

Yes, they are politicians. But not generals. Nor is there a reason you should expect somebody who is good at politics to be good at military matters. In addition, if you have a council making war plans, you can dissolve it and find a new one. That is not possible with your bondsmiths. Right. So when they did so, those teams were special forces. They would never form an ordinary infantry company. The KRs do not need to attack much. Gavilar wanted to change the status quo. The KRs intend to keep it. Humans were established on Roshar when they were formed. Their overriding goal in the Desolations was not to lose. Secondly not to win a pyrrhic victory. That points to conserving your forces and let the other side bleed attacking fortified positions and fortresses. If possible you always counterattack. Yet that does not change the strategy. Nor can we make the assumption that the most numerous Knights were the most important or best at their tasks. On the contrary, there is a paradox you can observe in social insects with physical castes. The better specialists become at their task the fewer they can be in numbers. Hence, yes the Windrunners were many, as they needed to be to have a realistic chance of even detecting a raid against a village. But the ones who build and hold key fortresses are essential.

We have no idea how serious he was about that offer. He may have hoped for an entirely different reaction. If the Heralds were in on it, we can be quite sure that he did not want the desolations to restart. Gavilar being a member of an organization does not allow us to assume that he shared that organization's goals. Rather sensible. I think it is most plausible to assume that he was abusing the Sons of Honor for his own ends, which did involve rekindling bonds and oaths but presumably not the desolations.

Arelon, specifically Elantris has a method of initiation different from the rest of Sel. A country would be possible though not be the most obvious option. Patji on First of the Sun?

I can look, but isn't that the point of F-copper? Brandon isn't wordy about Identity. WOB on Identity Why can't it? Alterable attributes can be stored, obviously, again: copper.. That is a religious question, I am afraid.

But they weren't. KRs were like Shardbearers on today's Roshar. Forces consisting only of them were rare exceptions. They were few in number. Well, those who build the walls, gates and battlements are not necessarily those who hold them in battle. In fact, should they need to be repaired, spending the lives of those suited to that is unwise. I am afraid the assumption that the main martial activity is attacking is wrong. On a planet where fortresses still are main components of warfare, attacking is extremely rare. You skirmish and raid. Unlikely. Too expensive in gems. Stonewards and Willshapers are better. Willshapers are sent to outlying towns because they can teleport. Well, you see a distinction that is artificial. If you have fortifications in great numbers, they are the main targets of artillery. Yes. But there are the moments when the enemy is at the gates and everybody who can hold a sword or spear will need to fight. What roles will the orders fulfill?

So, you do not want to be observed using two powers at once, at least not by people whom you cannot kill to silence. That means that you should pick a power that is hard to hide and useful. If you wanted to be underestimated you wouldn't admit to being an allomancer at all, rather than something like an augur. So what would you be? I cannot decide between Seeker - you can't burn copper while seeking, so you cannot hide seeking from Seekers Coinshot - you will need to explain the speed you displayed getting hither thence on occasion, even if you wear a mask or disguise while flying around What do you think?

Very interesting. I would rather say High Priests. The actual leadership may come from a council of intellectually inclined orders. I doubt that they had so many ground troops. Roshar does not have artillery. The dominance of fortifications wouldn't break. Warfare has a much greater component of siegecraft, sapping and assaults against fortresses rather than infantry against infantry action. I would say: Stonewards - fortress defense and infantry Dustbringers - sappers and attacks on fortresses Windrunners - paratroopers and scouts Willshapers - combat engineers

Well, memories at least store separately from Identity, so the copy would be incomplete.

Why? Isn't your age that part of your spiritual Identity? OK, suppose you have recorded your Identity. And your trusted minions torture a Fering into storing his own Identity and tapping your Identity. Does he become you to the point that your recently deceased soul can take over his or her body?

Is there a scenario which would make burning bronze and copper sensible? Would you always block your own perception? Or is it possible to sense pulses coming from outside the coppercloud? Can you make a coppercloud shaped liked a donut, excluding yourself?

Is that a way to protect you from emotional allomancy? Can you use this to shake off Harmony getting at you through your spikes? If you compound older Identity, do you return to that stage, that is, do you become ageless? Or, Harry Potter style, resurrection through an anchor? And can you make selective shielding? One might speculate that aluminium storiing Identity has a relation to the reason aluminium seems so inert. (Roshar) So if you put your Identity into aluminium, would you have a piece of alumium that lets your allomancy pass yet blocks everything else?

That would be a shard with a potentially terrifying agenda. Like eradicating whole continents for being insufficiently brutal in torturing an oathbreaker to death.

You would need to explain why Autonomy interfered in classical Scadrial. She has a motive to prepare, but not to attack, while a splinter would be driven by a pure Intent.

That seems like a gigantic waste. In fact a bomb going of is a waste. If they wanted him dead a bomb with a timer or poison in his food would have done the job. So they needed him to die together with the Faceless Immortal. (Taldain) That and the exact wording makes it likely that the aim of the operation was twofold, first to silence Edwarn and secondly to turn him into a Cognitive Shadow. Now which world would require a physical presence of an agent for that? (Threnody)