Oltux72

While your government is an assembly of hundreds of politicians corrupt to a smaller or larger degree? If you have an influx of Harmonium people would ask whence the substance comes from. How do you keep that secret on Scadrial? And if it becomes known you may keep the general public out, but surely you would have to send researchers through. And they would talk. Scadrial has no real military and their god is a scholar who values free expression.

So the Soyherners have a perpendicularity of their own? If so the Northerners must guard theirs. If not we must allow for some treaty that allows the Southerners to use it. And they would use it, just to keep up appearances. Hence the North would guard it. And if thensions are very bad they would guard it to secure themselves against umpleasant surprises. Right. But that implies troops (well probably a specialised constablury unit) there. How would an Aimian get through? He would have to emulate somebody known and that in a very short time. And a simple X-ray would reveal them or even drawing blood for a medical exam. I just cannot see anybody but a Kandra, Lightweaver or Returned pull this off. And they wouldn't endanger their mission by becoming a serial killer.

Roshar has a tech level of about the 17th century without gun powder. Hence they have no mass transport. Hence perpendicularities can be inaccessible for everybody but exceptional cases. Yet I cannot see this at late 19th or early 20th century levels of technology. If they had that level of technology they would have a railway to the perpendicularity. But would it be open to everybody? Not necessarily. The Knights Radiant may want to control travel. We are seeing the same development on Taldaine. Autonomy does not pursue a liberal policy on travel. The Elantrians keep the pool to themselves. But there is a world I cannot see this apply to. The Scadrians will soon map the whole planet. They have a free press. Within at most twenty years the perpendicularity will be known to the general public of the northern continent. I cannot help and suspect we will see "Allomancer Jak in the Realm of Mists" and the University of Elendel sending research teams there.

A Voidbringer with Transportation. Gravitation or Transport would hit a jackpot. If you got Adhesion or Tension, however, you are out of luck. Hence I have to disagree. The association of limitlessness and thus low risk is misplaced. The high risk option is Voidbringer. You get one power. If it sucks, that's it.

In that case the perpendicularities would be watched and guarded. And they would have traffic through them. Unless Harmony blocks them, in which case the whole point would be moot. In fact I cannot see how you would not have some kind of controls and guards on accessible perpendicularities at that level of technology in a reasonable open country. Idle curiosity seekers will use them, especially in a world with adventureres living from publishing, and public opinion will demand at least some check points and patrols.

I'd say they know about keeping oaths. But not about protecting those you have sworn no oath to.

Why are Cryptics the spren of the Lightweavers? They are into deep universal truth. Yet they pick artists, who create stuff that is true on a personal level, but deeply personal and hence not objective truth. Naively thinking it seems to me that the Cryptics should be the Elsecaller spren and inkspren, as ink is about literature, should be the Lightweaver spren. Pattern states that he is on a suicide mission to learn stuff, not to promote their values or something. I propose that the orders are not characterized by the values of their spren, but by their deficiencies. That is, they seek to learn about the limitations of their strengths. The Cryptics wish to learn subjectivity as they already have objectivity. The inkspren seek truth, as they already have honesty, but no way to tell who is right in an honest disagreement. Wyndle knows how to grow things and nurture stuff. But a good breeder will propagate the strong and throw away the weak. He is looking for compassion. The Reachers already travel, but they are subordinate. They seek independence. The Highspren know justice, but they seek law. The Stormfather is on a journey to understand forgiveness for the sake of unity. Spren champion an order with related but decidedly different goals from themselves. What do you think?

This fits ill with the recording. In fact of the many hypotheses it fits least, as it implies that you want to protect everybody. The recording contradicts that. It does not explain the connection between Kaladin's breakdown in Kholinar and the fourth oath. But their mission is not to protect the masses. Syl explicitely rejects the idea that for the good of the country Elhokar should be eliminated. That fits the theme of the battle in the palace. That is a very utilitarian interpretation which arguably conflicts with the Honorsprens' undertsanding of "journey before destination". Nor are the Windrunners about justice. "You are not a Skybreaker".

Not exactly. There is a subtle difference. The Metallic Arts have inheritance by potential. Even if your parents never burned metal you still can inherit the ability. In such a case scattering the practitioners of the power and cutting transmission of lore from generation to generation won't work. That scattering the people who practice sandmastery would eradicate sandmastery is implied in volume#2. Baon shows us that it is not quite so simple. Yet there are far too many people whose ancestors were sandmasters to dismiss inheritance out of hand. As far as we know Sandmastery can still be semicontagious. Your showing the ability may depend on actual exposure to a sandmaster.

That means you are plunged into a gigantic amount of Investiture. We have an example of that happening (Scadrial) (Roshar)

But what is that reason, even if Rashek shared it? What do you have to lose? The existance of a CS, going by Kelsier's example, isn't horrible and you have a new world to explore. You could bond the living. You get some magical powers. Why go immediately without pressing need? You can always go later. Or can you?

No, there is no Surge for heating/cooling, warning or inflicting or numbing pain. That is very much what happens in the Purelake. You consume the fish and they make things happen to you. Lift also eats things.

Some use of Aons existed. Not necessarily AonDor. The pool clearly survived the splintering of Devotion. And the location of Elantris next to the pool is easy to explain by them simply picking the location. That can just as easily apply to the people before Elantris was built. Do we? It looks a lot like devotion to a country.

I agree. But that turns the question around. If Threnodians had a ritual to turn you into a Cognitive Shadow, why did a significant number of people not use that option? That requires basically a death wish. There must have been a downside to the decision, too, or it would have become an obvious no-brainer.

You don't have to understand everything. You have to understand your choices or ways. Like Szeth, should he swear the 5th ideal, will need to understand why he picked Dalinar and chose to cleanse Shinovar. And then he would need to act as Dalinar and his crusade would require him to act even without their explicit guidance. However, I would caution to reason based on one example extending to the other orders. For all we know the underlying principle behind 5th ideal could be as simple as: Understand the reason behind the ideals and act accordingly.

It can just as well be the other way round. Elantris was built where the perpendicularity is located. That would also explain why there is only one Elantris. It needs to be at the perpendicularity to work.

Well, I have to say it outright. Forgiveness is injustice. It means that who deserves to be punished, isn't punished. But he doesn't. Kaladin does harm to the kingdom by protecting Elhokar. His own mother, uncle and sister considered him incompetent. By pure utilarianism Kaladin would step aside and let him be killed. No, he values a concrete duty of protection more. The Skybreakers cannot really go into the streets and punish people for traffic violations and littering. They need a way to set priorities. Hence the ideal of crusade. The Windrunners have a different issue. Suppose the need to protect A and B. A and B want to kill each other. The Windrunner is given an impossible task.

I think you are misinterpreting Brandon. The "original Elantrians" predate Elantris. But they became Elantrians in the modern sense by building Elantris.

These three have something in common. They deal with internal contradictions and clash with other goals of the first oath. Skybreakers - what if the law books contradict each other? Windrunners - what if they are not worth protecting? Bondsmiths - what if unity were best achieved surpressing the truth? The third ideal of the Windrunners made that clear. Protection is more important than justice. The Edgedancers don't fit. I must admit that. The Skybreakers faced the issue that judges and executioners alone cannot make justice. You need people who decide what needs to be done. The Windrunners have a further problem, which Kaladin faced in Kholinar, what happens if people need to be protected from each other?

We know: A botched Aon can cause something very like the Reod The Reod took toddlers even a decade after Elantris fell Fixing Elantris turned the Reod into the Shaod immediately Breaking Elantris turned the Shaod into the Reod immediately, but only if you were close enough Assuming that Elantris totally ceased to function, what turned people into zombies? A natural consequence of AonDor? That sounds like quite extraordinary a proposal, as pre-Elantris Arelon would have been full of zombies. (2) seems to rule out that we are dealing with a delayed action. If it is something else, why does it keep working? If that is not the case, what other options exists but a malfunctioning Elantris causing the transformation? Well, they did not build the city for fun, so it must have enanced them in some way. If they were immortal, where are they?

Yes. But they lacked the abilities of Elantrians. (Immortality, vitality, immaterial Aons). All other Selish magic is open to everybody of the right nationality and requires physical patterns. That I consider a dubious assumption. Clearly Elantris amplifies. But that is no proof that that is all it does. But it did not make it wholly unfunctional. It still caused the Reod. The original state did not return because Elantris was not returned to the original state of not existing. It was in between. It didn't. It became a malfunctioning Aon. There is a small tolerance between perfectly working, badly working, wrongly working and failing Aons. Altered yes. Fundamentally is a matter of opinion. The Aons stayed the same. The conditions of access to the Dor changed. Every other Selish magic is open to everybody of the right nationality.

That cannot be the original state. It would have ruled out starting Elantris. Possibly the group that build Elantris was totally converted into Elantrians. Elantris changes the way you can access the Dor. At a minimum it gives vitality and immortality. Why, if it can change proto-AonDor couldn't it also break proto-AonDor or its users? Presumably if you really destroyed Elantris totally they would arise again. Elantris was broken and stopped functioning correctly, but not altogether. It very much still had an undesirable effect. Strictly speaking it didn't. It changed the access mode. Proto-AonDor stopped working. And the transformation into Elantrians was nummerically limited from the very start by the effectiveness of Elantris. I suppose if you enlarged the city, you could make more Elantrians.

All systems based on the Dor cannot predate the formation of the Dor. But Sel had two Shards in residence before that, presumably for quite some time. During that time Sel's CR must have been accessible. Where are the worldhoppers who left Sel during that time?

For all we know it also concentrates. In other words full blown Elantrians did not predate Elantris. Some proto-Elantrians who could use some Aons formed out of physical materials existed. They couldn't form Aons out of thin air and lacked the physical attributes. They chose to build Elantris. They turned a limited number of themselves into physical demigods and confined them to Arelon. The rest lost out. Why need there have been a limit before Elantris?

The Aon that is Elantris has a certain strength. Once that is exhausted the increase ends.